Dead Man's Cave
by Dr.Dre
Summary: Aliens, Predators, a research base on a military owned planet. Things get out of control and it's up to the integrity, will power, and fighting abilities of an unlikely gang of allies. Highly detailed action, and combat.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: Nightmare Come True**

"_Are we gonna die?"_

_-Malway_

3614 hours (planet time) November 30, 2201

The bright sun illuminated LV-491 but did not give the warmth one would expect from such a bright star. Atmospheric processors did their job and made a clean breathable atmosphere but they did not create clouds or gasses that would trap the heat rising from the planet at night. In fact, most of the time the temperature stayed within the twenties to sixties range. The most common conditions were clear skies, a bright sun, and cold air. Canyons, mountains, and flatlands littered with car-sized volcanic rocks, shaped this planet. In the middle of one of these canyons, confidently walked three men – patrol-style. Flanked by 400 meter high cliffs these men had the appearance of soldiers. The man in front held an assault rifle and a brick-shaped motion detector. Behind him, scanning the caves punched through the cliff walls by lava was a sniper. Every now and then he would stop, point his long barrel toward a cave and stare at it through his scope. Watching the formation's back was a bulky and heavily armed soldier. He was gripping his automatic shotgun as if his life depended on it. All of a sudden, the motion detector starting beeping and the point-man checked the screen.

"We got movement in sector 8A." said Private Frank Chipper. A well-shaped, attractive blonde pilot with piercing blue eyes. "Bearing - west." he reported. "Man, these caves are giving me the creeps!"

He adjusted the flip-screen against the sun and zipped up his flight suit.

"Didn't we secure that area?" asked Corporal Bryan Cork, the five-foot, eleven-inch head of the Marine reconnaissance squad. The black-haired and brown-eyed sniper shared Chipper's fears.

"I thought we got everybody!" shouted Private Martin Malway, a tall and muscular former Australian bodybuilder. "We wasted two bloody hours just to-"

"Hey!" interrupted Cork, extremely annoyed at Malway's demoralizing behavior and mental weakness. "All you were doing the last two hours was performing the Last Rites on yourself every time you saw an alien."

"Yo Cork, we got more movement!" shouted Chipper who had fallen a few meters behind Cork and Malway.

"Which sectors?" inquired Cork, stopping and sweeping the landscape with his powerful .75 caliber sniper rifle.

"Sectors 9B, 2K, and 15L."

Chipper caught up to Cork and Malway, assumed a defensive stance, and pulled back the charging lever of his (10mm) .40 caliber assault rifle. Satisfied that a bullet was in the barrel, he let it snap back into place.

"Damn it!" Cork swore, wishing that he had at least a platoon under command, "we don't have enough ammo or soldiers to kill every freakin' bug that comes out of those damn caves, and whenever one comes out, others are sure to follow."

Malway started panicking.

"Oh no! I'm not gonna do noth-"

"Shut up!" Cork grabbed Malway's bullet-proof vest, "if you keep on talking…let's just say you will beg me to let you perform hara-kiri on yourself with a stick. Without the Last Rites! Got that?!" Cork looked serious.

Then the Corporal took the radio attached to his right shoulder and radioed The Base.

"Recon squad Foxtrot 618 to Base, over."

"Base to Foxtrot 618, identify yourself, over." hissed the comm.

"This is Corporal Cork, we had a run-in with some alien bastards several hours ago and it seems that we alerted more aliens than we killed. Motion detector shows four big blips coming from two directions toward The Base. Please advise. Over."

"Which sectors Corporal? Over."

Cork put his sniper rifle on the ground and took the motion detector from Chipper. He noticed that the signal at 9B moved to 8B.

"Uh…8A, 8B, 2K, and 15L. Looks like at least three packs, four for sure, advancing toward the base, over."

"8A, 8B, 2K, and 15L, roger."

Cork heard communications specialist a.k.a. Gadget tap away on his keyboard. Then something caught the specialist's attention.

"Wait…2K? Corporal Cork, are you sure that there is a signal at 2K? Over."

"Affirmative. Update - contact at 15L just moved north to 14L."

Then it struck Cork. A blip at 2K meant that someone or something was at least two miles away from the southeastern side of The Base.

"How could our Special Forces miss _anything_ in their sweep yesterday?!" cried Malway, "We're screwed man, we're screwed!"

"Knock it off, Malway!" shouted Chipper, "We were trained to identify and eliminate threats, _not_ to lose our nerve. Keep it together man."

"I've got a bad feeling about this …" Malway complained but on second thought, decided to try to take control of himself and not panic.

"This is bad Corporal. What's your position? Over" The Base was now on combat alert – Alpha, the highest.

"Chip, what's our position?" Cork asked.

"I6, sir."

"Base, our position is I6."

"Copy that Foxtrot 618, now listen up, the Colonel wants you to intercept the blip at 2K and if hostile, engage it. Your orders are to proceed to sector 1K ASAP and from there, south toward the target at 2K. Copy?"

"Affirmative," replied Cork, "I don't mean to complain, but my squad contains, other than me, one soldier and one pilot. We can hold off ten, hostiles. Fifteen at most, but no more than that. Not to mention that we are four miles away from 2K and it will take us at least half an hour to get to that sector. Over."

"Copy that Foxtrot 618. Unfortunately we cannot send any reinforcements. SpecOps are currently executing a high priority mission, our troops are on a supply run, and we can't give you anybody from our Base Defense Force, we are limited on soldiers as it is. You're going to have to do this one on your own. Good luck Foxtrot 618. Base out."

This was not the kind of encouragement that Corporal Cork wanted to hear. Ever since the aliens, who smuggled themselves in a cargo starship delivering water, destroyed the original Colony Research Complex, Cork had been in many life and death situations. He knew that only luck saved him every time. Luck does not last forever; one day, he knew he would not get lucky…

"All right men-" Cork paused. He remembered the time when his reconnaissance squad had ten men. Now he commanded only two soldiers. "Our orders are to go over to 1K and then head on a collision course with the signal. Are there any questions?"

Usually this was the time that Malway would start complaining or stalling. But Malway limited himself to only three words.

"No questions, sir."

This was good for Cork as the leader of Foxtrot 618. The last thing he needed right now was an unstable and scared soldier. He needed every man he could get, especially his heavy weapons specialist.

"Troops! Let's move it out!" exclaimed Cork, and his squad quickly jogged toward the designated area.

Chipper took the point, armed with a .40 caliber (10mm) assault rifle, and a .45 caliber (11.5mm) machine pistol that was in a holster strapped to his chest. He liked this setup because it was easy to switch between his primary and secondary weapon. He packed 390 rounds for his AR, and 70 rounds for his machine pistol. Corporal Cork was roughly three meters behind Chipper; his primary weapon was a .75 caliber (20mm) sniper rifle, and for his secondaries he had two .40 caliber (10mm) submachine guns with six-inch knife attachments under each barrel. He took 90 rounds for his sniper rifle, and 300 rounds for his SMGs. The lowest ranking soldier, Malway, covered the small groups' six o'clock with his secondary weapon. A good three meters behind Cork, Malway was armed with a short-barreled 8-gauge combat shotgun "_Brute_", and strapped to his back, barrel-down was his primary, a .50 caliber (12.7mm) machine gun with a 1.59 caliber (40mm) pump-action grenade launcher attachment. Malway took 1500 rounds for his primary weapon, 13 grenades for the launcher, and 40 shells for his secondary weapon.

When Foxtrot 618 covered about 1.5 miles Malway finally revealed the reason for his sudden change.

"Corporal?"

"I don't have time for it."

Cork did not have time to listen to Malway's attempts to avoid combat. He was going over tactics and strategies and planning for the worst.

"No sir. It's not that, really."

Cork turned his head and took a quick look at Malway who, surprisingly, looked sincere.

"What is it?" the Corporal asked.

"Are we gonna die?"

"Wrong question Malway. The right question is 'Are we going to get to 2K in time to kill the damn aliens and keep The Base safe?' which reminds me…Chip! What's our position?"

Private Chipper looked at the motion detector.

"Sector 2J sir, a mile away from sector 2K."

"ETA?"

"At present speed, nine and a half minutes. If we run, about six minutes."

"Time?"

"3850 hours sir."

"What!?" Cork almost dropped his sniper rifle.

"Sir, you forget that here on LV-491, days are forty-eight hours long. Back on Earth, it would be around seven-thirty p.m. or in military time, 1950 hours."

"Oh. Can't get used to this damn planet and its days."

"Corporal, what are we waiting for? Chip just said that we are five minutes away from those bloody insects. Let's go an' get 'em!"

"Hold your horses Malway. We were told to go to 1K not 2K."

"But the freakin' aliens are at 2K! What's the bloody point of going to 1K when we can just shoot their bloody-excuses for heads at 2K?!" Now Malway was beginning to sound like his old self.

"First of all Malway, shut up!" Cork's patience ended right then and there. "Second of all, we were ordered by our _superior officer_ to go to 1K and _then_ move to 2K! And third of all, it looks like all of your fucking weightlifting caused your useless muscles to hog 90 percent of your blood leaving only 10 percent to your much needed brain!!" Cork surprised even himself. Never before had he mocked someone's physical appearance or raised his voice so much as he was doing now at Malway. He took a deep breath and then more calmly said, "Otherwise, you would've understood that while we are moving _south_ to 2K, the aliens are moving _north_ to The Base. By the time we get to 2K, the aliens will already be either at 1K or at The Base."

"Sorry, sir. I understand, sir." said a shocked Malway. Not at the fact that Cork had shouted at him, again, but that he did not strike him. Any other officer certainly would have.

During Cork's barrage aimed at Malway, Chipper was surprised that while the signals at 8A, 8B, and 15L had already moved to sectors 4A, 5B, and 12L, the signal at 2K didn't move south to 1K. Instead, it did something that if it was an alien, it never does. Right after Malway's apology Chipper stopped running and reported this to Cork.

"Corporal Cork!"

"What happened? Why'd you stop?"

"Sir, the signal at 2K didn't move to 1K."

"Well where _did_ it move?"

"Sir it didn't move, it disappeared."

"No…" For the second time in a day, Cork almost dropped his sniper rifle. "Damn bugs stopped moving. Somehow they found out that we are on our way to perform brain surgery on them and now, they want to ambush us."

Obviously this scared the devil out of Malway.

"Well what do we do now? Remember LV-426? Every damn Marine died except Corporal Hicks. You want that to happen again!?"

"Listen to me, chicken!" This was from Chipper. He did not want the Corporal to waste his breath on Malway anymore. "If the events of LV-426 repeat here, then you will die with honor. Like Hudson. He was a wus like you. He saved his team by firing his weapon until he was killed by an alien."

"All right men, listen up!" Cork came up with a plan. "We are now half a mile away from where they were seen last on the motion detector. Malway, switch to your machine gun. We'll need the firepower. We are going to jog until we are three hundred meters from 2K. At three hundred meters, we will blitzkrieg 'em. Let's go!"

For some reason, this short speech gave ramped up Malway's confidence. He strapped his shotgun to his back and shouldered the portable machine gun. He flipped open the top panel on the gun, inserted the ammunition belt, closed the panel, and noisily racked a round into the chamber.

As Malway ran to catch up with the rest of Foxtrot 618, Chipper, due to his Air Force training, had been keeping track of the team's position and watching the motion sensor.

"Corporal, I just saw a flicker on 2K."

Cork felt slightly more confident at this confirmation that the signal, whoever it may be, was still at 2K.

"Keep it tight people. The damn cockroaches probably stood still until we got real close to them, and now they're ditching their positions and hiding in one of their caves, which is why Chip only saw a flicker."

"Movement!" Chipper reported. "Lot's of movement!"

"Where?" asked the Corporal.

"Three o'clock, two hundred meters."

"Damn bugs heard me talking about' 'em."

One hundred meters on Foxtrot 618's right was the edge of a cliff with a twenty-foot drop. One hundred meters away from that cliff and the team was the blip's source.

"Sir, that means that they are on our right!" Malway informed Cork.

"Malway that is the smartest thing you said today." Cork said, obviously annoyed. Then in a more neutral tone, he added, "Is that launcher loaded?"

"Sir! Yes it is. Sir!" Malway whispered as loudly as he could.

"We hit 'em hard, fast, and we don't miss. Do you read me?" Cork whispered.

"We read you sir!" Malway and Chipper whispered back.

"On the count of three."

Private Chipper with Corporal Cork to his left crawled on their stomachs toward the cliff edge, Malway's machine gun prevented him from crawling so instead, he snaked to the cliff on his back and like Chipper and Cork to his left, stopped at about three meters from the cliff, assuming a one-knee defensive stance. Cork slightly raised his left hand and lifted three fingers in fast succession. Then the three of them stood up and quickly moved to about one meter from the cliff edge.

It took them three and a half seconds to take in the entire situation. There was a total of seventy-seven xenomorphs charging Foxtrot 618 and scaring the hell out of Malway, who never before saw so many aliens in one place. Twenty meters away at Foxtrot 618's ten o'clock were twenty bunched up aliens; seventeen aliens just ran up to the foot of the cliff and seven hundred meters behind these two groups of aliens ran _another_ forty aliens straight toward the cliff. This was an entire alien pack.

Then all hell broke loose, almost literally. Malway fired two grenades at the bunched up aliens in fast succession and peppered the surviving aliens with .50 caliber lead. Corporal Cork got down on one knee and spent half of his ten-round clip in three seconds sniping the forty readily approaching aliens. He missed his first target, killed his second target and the alien behind it with the same bullet, and nailed a third alien by destroying its neck. His fourth round was wasted and his fifth punched through an alien's knee. Chipper threw a grenade at the seventeen aliens scaling the cliff wall, killing three aliens and severely injuring a fourth that died soon after. Hearing an explosion and alien screeching, he emptied his assault rifle's whole clip into the nearest two aliens clinging to the cliff wall below him, killing both. Without time to reload, he stabbed the barrel of his assault rifle into the first alien whose head popped up over the cliff. The dead alien plummeted back down with Chipper's assault rifle. To make sure it was dead, he pulled out his machine pistol, kneeled, and blew off its head. He emptied the rest of his clip into three aliens almost at the top of the cliff. Ten kills in twenty seconds.

Malway killed all of the aliens he initially targeted and was reloading and Cork killed seventeen aliens and was aiming for an eighteenth (he missed) when Chipper shouted, "Stand back! NOW!"

Cork switched to his SMGs and, with Malway, quickly backtracked providing cover for Chipper who was running away from the cliff. When he saw and heard Cork and Malway leveling their weapons in his direction and shouting for him to get out of the way, he reloaded his pistol. After that, he only made two steps when a very sharp round claw landed on his shoulder and wheeled him around, Chipper used the momentum and slammed his pistol into the alien's head. In response, the alien screeched and viciously back-handed Chipper's torso. Chipper flew back, emptied his whole fourteen round clip into the alien's head, and neatly back flipped onto his feet. He reloaded and racked the slide on his pistol and prepared to support his team. Malway used the clear angle of fire by firing into the headless alien corpse until a bullet ripped through a leg and the body tumbled down the cliff.

Apparently this alien was just the scout for the six aliens clinging to the cliff wall, because as soon as his dismembered and bullet-riddled body tumbled down, Foxtrot 618 heard the typical eerie screeching that meant more pissed off aliens are coming. Foxtrot 618 was not mistaken. Following the screeching, six aliens literally flew up from their cliff wall position and ran at the team only six meters away from the cliff and firing all weapons. These aliens jumped and rolled toward the team making it difficult to aim. This forced Foxtrot 618 to fall back four times throwing incendiary grenades to cover their retreat. Fire generally worked well against xenomorphs...for a short period of time that is. In forty seconds, the last alien, missing both arms and half of its head, slumped down, twitched twice, and then lay still. That is when Malway lost control of himself and started wildly shooting at the alien's corpse.

"YOU BASTARD! YOU BLOODY DAMN COCKROACH!"

"Malway!" shouted Corporal Cork.

"COME ON! GET UP SO I CAN KILL YOU AGAIN!"

"MALWAY!"

If Malway did not suddenly run out of ammunition, he would not have heard the Corporal.

"Don't look that tough now, do they?" Malway mocked the dead aliens.

"Cool it Malway! You just wasted the rest of your ammo on a DEAD BUG!"

"Sorry sir. I-"

Malway did not get to finish because he was interrupted by the rumble of a stampede of twenty-three blood-thirsty aliens thundering toward the cliff, and very close now. Foxtrot 618 was exhausted and the weapon with the most firepower, Malway's machine gun, was out of ammunition. They simply could not handle twenty-three _more _aliens.

"This is it men! Let's show these freakin' oversized cockroaches the consequences of messing around with Foxtrot 618! Malway drop your damn machine gun and take out that _Brute_."

"Are we gonna die, sir?" asked Malway.

"If we die," Chipper said. "we die like men, shooting those bugs until either we're dead. Stopping only when we're out of ammo…and even then, only to grip our weapons like clubs and continue the massacre."

Chipper and Cork never really liked Malway, but in these last moments of their lives, they set all differences aside and only hoped that they could kill enough aliens to justify their death and protect The Base. Malway's thoughts were suddenly cut short when he heard the aliens stabbing their claws into the cliff wall and, scaling it with amazing speed.

"HERE THEY COME!" shouted Cork.

The aliens crawled over the cliff in two waves. The first wave lost three aliens out of thirteen to Cork's SMGs and Chipper's machine pistol, a second later the second wave numbering ten aliens, rushed Foxtrot 618's right flank - where Malway held his ground. At this point the aliens were reduced to nine in the first wave and six in the second wave.

Cork desperately tried to kill more aliens before they were too close to shoot. He killed three aliens, blew an arm off a fourth and spun twice. On the first rotation he kicked the legs from under one alien and on his second one, fatally sliced the blade attachments through another's skull. The alien he dropped earlier pulled Cork's legs from under him and Cork fell flat on his back. The alien Cork blew an arm off of was running toward Chipper – at this point the most lightly armed. It took Chipper seven .45 caliber round (the _last_ half of his _last_ clip) _headshots_ to drop that extremely stubborn xenomorph. The second wave lined up into a hook-like formation (long end – three aliens, round end – one alien, short end – two aliens) and Malway decided to attack the long end. Pointing his Brute toward the long end, he punched holes through aliens at four shots per second.

Out of ammunition, Chipper whipped out his knife for close-quarters but was instantly knocked down by two aliens - the rest were occupied with Cork and Malway. Cork instinctively dropped an SMG, to cushion his own fall but his back still connected solidly with the ground. He kicked the air with both feet to get up fast but ended up kicking the alien that dropped him earlier. The second and last alien facing Cork made an attempt to slash through his neck but instead hit the barrel of Cork's SMG. Malway killed the leader of the long end and was engaging the aliens behind it when he realized that in a moment they would surround him with the round end on his right and the short end behind him. He reacted by striking the two aliens he was shooting at with the side of his weapon, knocking one out and fatally breaking the other's neck. Switching targets, Malway stabbed the alien making up the round end with his shotgun and blew through its head with the last round in his clip. Then he slammed the butt of his shotgun into the neck of one of the two aliens making up the short end.

Chipper broke his flight by stabbing his knife into the ground up to the hilt. As a result, both aliens landed ten meters behind him and, after rolling another four meters, got up and charged. Cork's SMG flew out of his hand and the alien went for his throat. Luckily Cork caught the alien's limbs and was now wrestling with the incredibly strong alien. The alien that Cork kicked shook off its daze, jumped at Cork, and was impaled in midair with a titanium spear to its cranium. The second alien's claws kept nearing Cork's neck. Slowed down by huge muscles, Malway was not fast enough to kill the last alien which took the advantage and slashed his arm. Overwhelmed by pain, Malway dropped his shotgun and sent the alien flying with a punch from his good hand, and reloaded the _Brute_ with his last ten-round clip.

The two aliens that narrowly missed Chipper charged only a meter when they were fatally knocked down by an armored motorbike. Chipper, not seeing what just happened and thinking that they were just knocked out by their earlier fall, rushed toward the aliens with his knife, having no intentions to let them get up. Three meters away from the aliens, his legs unexpectedly weakened causing him to misstep and trip. The motorcycle was approaching Cork at a high speed when the driver whipped out a six-foot long titanium spear ending in an extremely sharp twelve-inch blade. Cork was conserving his energy by only pushing the alien at three-fourths of his strength. When the alien had a few inches to his throat, Cork gathered what energy he had left and pushed hard. Malway pointed his shotgun at the only standing remnant of the hook and raked a shell into the barrel, when the alien jumped in front of him and tried to knock the shotgun aside**. **Malway spun and delivered a powerful, bone-shattering kick to the alien's chest throwing it into the air. To finish it off, he emptied the last of his shells into the alien, tearing it to pieces.

Chipper fell face down on the ground and the knife he held, plunged into a dead alien's head. The motorcyclist drove past Cork plunging his spear into Cork's last opponent. Cork felt that the alien was pulled by something and since he was holding its arms, he was pulled with it. Confused and scared, he let go of the alien's hands and fell, his head hitting the ground - knocking him out. Malway saw the motorcycle, something he never even hoped for in this battle, the alien he knocked-out earlier with the side of his weapon, and forgot all about, regained consciousness and hacked very deep into his back. The pain from this and the loss of blood earlier caused Malway to black-out.

The driver dropped the spear with the alien attached to it, grabbed his last spear, and violently squeezed the brakes on his motorbike. Inertia pushed him out of his bike and he flew with his feet and spear pointed at the last live alien. Raising the spear above his head for maximum force, he plunged half of it into the alien's open and screeching mouth. Releasing his hold on the weapon, his feet made contact with the ground and after the inertia slid him another six feet back, he pulled out his ten-inch combat knife - just in case. Chipper, the only person who did not lose consciousness, missed what happened to his and Cork's enemies but saw what the motorcyclist did to Malway's. He was amazed at how fast this man took out four of the aliens that could have killed the rest of Foxtrot 618.

"About time, Pierce! What took you so long?" asked Chipper with mock-disappointment.

Pierce flipped the blade back into its sheath with extreme precision.

"The other three blips." Vincent Pierce grimly droned.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: The Base**

"_Yep, our walls were four feet thick. Made of one-hundred percent pure hardened clay."_

_-__Major Daniel Miller_

4275 hours (planet time) November 30, 2201

It was gradually getting darker. After Vincent treated Malway's gash, he radioed the troops returning from the supply run at the ruins of the Colony Research Complex, and requested extraction. It actually sounded like he _ordered_ them to extract Foxtrot 618 than _requested_. When the troops, driving two APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers), a light infantry support tank, and a massive combat supply truck, arrived at the cliff - they saw alien bodies scattered everywhere. After the soldiers inside the APC that Foxtrot 618 was riding in, heard that only three men held out against nearly eighty aliens, they were amazed. Naturally when they heard that it was Vincent that saved Foxtrot 618's lives, they were disappointed that they missed an opportunity to meet the man they had heard so much about but seen almost none of. It was generally considered that whoever gets to see Vincent is a lucky man, but the person that gets to see him in combat is blessed. Every soldier in The Base, except the Army Special Forces, dreamed of seeing Vincent in action. The Army SpecOps saw Vincent as competition because he was with a Navy Special Warfare Team and the Army and Navy always competed. In addition to that, the SpecOps did not like it that Vincent was considered better and more popular than one of their operatives. The only problem with the wish to see him in combat was that Vincent did not live inside The Base – the only facility with the only humans left on the entire planet. He lived in one of the caves. With so many caves on this, as it was believed, forgotten planet - no attempt to find him was ever successful. Not that there _were_ that many attempts.

On the other hand, there were rare occasions when people spotted Vincent. When they did, they usually saw him standing on one of the cliffs that surrounded The Base which itself was located in the middle of a large valley. There was only one occasion when Vincent actually came to The Base. That occasion gave birth to the rule that you don't find Vincent, Vincent finds you. That is exactly what happened. The Base's commanding officer, Colonel Golmud, needed Vincent to protect the very first supply run. Roughly a month passed since the destruction of the Colony Research Complex and everybody was starving and weakening. The Colonel could not send his troops out, because he knew that they would not be able to defend themselves. They were low on ammunition and food. Somehow, Vincent found out about this need, and one night, he came. Back then The Base was constructed out of thick walls of hard clay with volcanic rocks lining the outer surfaces.

4760 hours (planet time) September 2, 2201

Army Colonel Lance Golmud was confident that all issues were covered and decided to end the meeting.

"Are there any more questions?" Golmud asked the five men sitting at the opposite end of his makeshift desk. After not getting a reply Colonel Golmud said, "All right, all of you are excused. Reinkowsky," Major Reinkowsky was in charge of logistics, "I want to know how long the supplies gained from this supply run will last us. I will be expecting a report from you tomorrow."

"Yes sir." Reinkowsky responded.

All five men rose and headed out. The men were Colonel Golmud's top aides and advisors, all members of the United States Army. Major Ian Reinkowsky was the Chief of Logistics. He made sure that every department in The Base had enough workers, enough essential supplies, and so on. Dr. José Gucharez was the only doctor in The Base; he also had a military rank of Major. Corporal Daniel Miller was the only engineer in The Base; his main responsibility was ensuring structural safety for the walls of The Base. Captain Thomas Xaire was head of the sixteen-man Army Special Forces platoon. His SpecOps primarily went on scouting missions, and executed sweeps of the caves in The Base's immediate surrounding area. Major Jordan Wallace was Colonel Golmud's second in command and his personal aide.

"Wallace, I'm going to ask you to stay for a few more minutes."

"Yes Colonel."

After the last of the aides left the meeting room and closed the chunk of wood that was supposed to be a door, Colonel Golmud voiced his worries.

"What do you think the chances are for our first supply run, Wallace?"

"They have a fifty-fifty chance Colonel."

"How do you know it's _exactly_ fifty-fifty, why can't we have less balanced odds?" The Colonel asked. He did not like such uncertain chances.

"Sir with all due respect, we have only thirty-seven infantrymen, most of them Privates." He did not even want to think about what he said next. "Their chances are fifty-fifty because if the aliens attack them, they're dead. If the aliens by some miracle do not attack them, they're saved. Our troops are not capable of taking on an alien assault. We are short on weapons and ammunition, and we don't even have armored vehicles for the troops to use. We don't have _any_ vehicles for that matter. Sir, I'd rather first send the Special Forces and stock up on weapons and ammunition, and then we can send the troops."

This grim report about the shape of the only defense that The Base had, frustrated the Colonel. He had a hard decision to make. He had to either send the troops out and risk their lives, or send the Special Forces and loose his only backup. Based on what he heard he had to decide whether he should risk more troops but save more skilled Special Forces, or risk Special Forces but keep more men to defend The Base.

"Your idea has merit, Major. But I don't want to risk my best soldiers' lives. We're going to send the troops and hope for the best."

"What are your hopes based on, Colonel?"

"How much days passed since the destruction of the CRC?"

"Thirty-two days."

"During these thirty-two days, did you ever hear about Vincent Pierce?"

The Major knew very well that there have been rumors about a man named Pierce supposedly lurking in the caves of some nearby canyons. There have been many reports made by soldiers and other witnesses alleging that Pierce had even worked in the CRC. As a matter of fact he was the one that handled Vincent's top-secret transfer to this planet, but Wallace did not want his acknowledgment to influence the whatever the Colonel wanted to say so he lied.

"No sir I haven't. Is he one of the soldiers?"

"He wasn't exactly a soldier…did you ever hear about the counter-alien program code-named SPIDER?"

The Major did not have to lie about this one.

"Of course! Who hasn't heard about those legendary soldiers?! Out of 2,500 _selected_ soldiers, only two-hundred passed the qualifying trials, and out of those two-hundred, only eighteen successfully passed the impossibly demanding training!"

"Well Mr. Pierce is one of those eighteen. From the circulating rumors, I've pieced together an interesting story. The story goes that he was friends with the head scientist studying the human colony at the CRC. Because she had the highest government clearance, X-ray, two years after the research started, the Fleet assigned Pierce, a SPIDER, to replace her security team and be her personal bodyguard. Apparently she liked the guy. The only evidence we have that he had a soft spot for her is the fact that she was twice captured by aliens who, Pierce thinks, wanted to turn her into a xenomorph Queen, and both times Vincent rescued her. Then again, Pierce just might've been very devoted to his job. It's interesting to note that on both occasions he was badly wounded and she had to treat him by herself, Dr. Gucharez was never asked to help."

Major Wallace shook his head when the scientist was mentioned.

"Ok for a sci-fi romantic plot you're doing very well Colonel, but I really want to snooze. What point are you trying to make?"

"During the alien assault on the Colony Research Complex, Pierce was occupied with saving the majority of the people in the complex instead of focusing on getting the scientist, he was tasked to protect, out of the complex alive. Word has it that she was taken by the aliens, again."

"And Vincent?"

"Perhaps trying to find the aliens' hive and rescue her for a third time."

Now the Major was confused.

"So how do I put the 'hope' you were talking about and this fairytale hero together?"

"On several occasions, soldiers have told me about a man, they have never seen before, rescuing them from certain death."

Wallace did not like what he was hearing. It sounded like the man in charge of The Base believed in a collection of rumors and stories. He sat down in a nearby chair facing the Colonel and laid it out to him.

"Sir, don't expect me to believe a bunch of hallucinations and stories that people recount when they are insane!"

The Colonel calmly responded to Wallace.

"Why do you think that the soldiers who tell us stories like that are insane?" Golmud asked.

"Sir, when a man experiences or goes through a near death situation, a mark is left on his mentality. Usually his memory is also influenced."

"That is all true," said Colonel Golmud. "but our soldiers never died since we've established The Base. Some have been in near death situations but none has died. Don't you find it odd that all of them recount pretty much the same 'hallucination'? I hope that if the aliens attack our supply convoy, Vincent will not let them kill our troops."

Golmud did not give Wallace time to make up an answer to this by wishing him a good night and both men headed for their rooms. Wallace's room was next to the conference room but Golmud had to get to the other side of the Base to reach his. While he was passing through the hardened clay corridors, random thoughts floated around in his head.

"_Strange how a SPIDER could have a soft spot for anyone,_" he thought. "_or anything. Doesn't the training program get rid of ALL emotions and weaknesses? I wonder if he is a real SPIDER or just a self-proclaimed SPIDER? It _is_ popular back on Earth to wear t-shirts with the SPIDER logo or_-"

"Golmud!" interrupted a slightly under five-foot tall Japanese girl.

"_Shit_."

"I want a new room and I'm hungry. I haven't eaten anything since yesterday." She was wearing her usual white t-shirt with a yellow zip-up vest over it.

"What the hell is wrong with the one you have now Sky?"

"There are bugs in it!" Sky angrily said and put her hands on the hips of her yellow capris. "And I want to eat. My stomach hurts!"

"Sky, everyone is having the same problems. Wait until tomorrow and you will get your food. As for your room, just kill the bugs and go to sleep. No one gets new rooms."

"I am not _everyone_!" Sky retorted. "You forget that I am Sky Yosumoto." She pointed at the white Japanese lettering on her red, inch-wide headband. "The daughter of CRC chief Michael Yosumoto."

"_Dead_ CRC chief." Golmud said without regard to her feelings. "Yosumoto was slaughtered during the alien assault." At this point tears welled up in her eyes. "Now that there is no CRC, _I_ am in command and _I_ decide how to run things, not the freakin' _dead_ chief of the _destroyed_ CRC and definitely not his annoying seventeen-year-old _pet_."

At this point, she definitely stopped fighting back tears that were already streaming down both cheeks, but she was still resisting the urge to cry out load.

"How dare you…!" she whispered at his hurtful choice of words. Then stomping her knee-high, beige combat boot she shouted. "How dare you talk to _me_ like that!!"

Then she covered her face in her hands and started crying uncontrollably. Golmud grabbed her shoulder, a little too hard, and shook her.

"Would you shut the hell up and go to sleep?!"

When Sky did not stop crying, Golmud back-handed her. She fell down on one knee and tried to cry quietly.

"You're just a spoiled brat who doesn't have a daddy that will spoil you anymore. From now on everyone in this damn base does as _I_ say…would you shut-"

Sky expected to be hit again because she sniffled a little too loud when Golmud was talking. Instead she heard a SpecOps operative scream as he flew back-first into Golmud. Golmud and the operative landed with a thud five meters behind her. Sky instantly got up and ran down the hall, away from Golmud and his aggravation. Looking back to see whether Golmud had gotten up, she crashed head first into someone and fell back. When she propped herself up on her elbows, she saw light-brown combat boots, a knee length cape of the same color, and the upper half of a man's face - the bottom was covered with his cape's high collar. She also noticed that he had medium length black hair – jaw-length in the front and gradually progressing to shoulder length in the back. His eyes were burning with rage.

"I'm sorry." she apologized, thinking he was mad at _her_, and convulsively sniffled.

She had forgotten that she was just crying a few minutes ago. Embarrassed, she covered her mouth with her hand. Before she got a chance to say anything else, the man, Vincent Pierce in the flesh, gave her his hand. Sky grasped the leather glove with both hands and lifted herself up. When she stood up, he approached the groaning body of the operative lying on his stomach by Golmud. Vincent reached down and lifted the operative by his bullet-proof vest and the operative instantly swung at Vincent's face with a knife he had hidden under himself. Vincent ducked, the knife stabbed the wall, and he kicked both feet from under the operative. The operative fell and pointed his gun at Vincent. Vincent was too far to kick the gun, too close to run away - so he waited until the operative steadied his gun, and then jumped to the side. He didn't even feel his knife slip out of its sheath. A shot rang out and Vincent jumped forward, pulled the slide on the operative's gun, jerked it up hard, rolled back and came up in a defensive position. The operative did not waste time either; he got up, pointed his pistol at Vincent and pulled the trigger. When nothing happened and the operative realized that Vincent disabled his gun, he swore and attacked Vincent with a punch. Vincent rotated for momentum and punched the elbow of the attacking arm. The force of the blow spun the operative's body. Not giving him time to react, Vincent nailed his head face-first into a wall.

"Surrender." hummed Vincent.

"Bastard!" shouted the operative. He planted his feet into the wall and pushed off hoping to make Vincent lose his footing. Vincent ducked right in time, the operative crashed into the opposite wall and Vincent knocked the wind out of him with a roundhouse to his stomach.

Before Vincent could turn around he felt the cold barrel of a pistol on his temple.

"If you move, I'll kill you." Golmud threatened.

Vincent cracked what could be called the beginnings of a smile. This kind of situation was one of the entry trials what applicants to the SPIDER program had to pass before they were trained. They were tested with _live_ guns. In the quickest of moves, Vincent moved his boot behind one of the Colonel's feet and kicked forward. Hard and fast. Golmud instinctive release of the gun sent it flying, as his hands whipped back to cushion his fall. Nevertheless, he landed hard due to the sudden nature of Vincent's tactic. Vincent caught the gun, ejected the clip and threw it behind him. By this time, the operative almost recovered from Vincent's kick and lunged for his feet. Vincent, without taking his eyes off Golmud, threw the gun at the operative's forehead knocking him out. With that relatively minor threat neutralized, Vincent took the operative's knife out of the wall and approached Golmud's groaning form. He grabbed Golmud's collar and slammed him up against a wall. Golmud felt a cold blade under his chin.

"Listen to me. Golmud." he huskily droned. "This is the _only_ supply convoy that I will protect. Ever."

"Thank you..." Golmud's voice was breaking up.

"I'm not doing this for _you_. I'm doing this for the people whose hardships were caused by your stupidity."

Vincent let go of Golmud and quickly walked out the way he came in. Sky, who was watching the whole time, tip-toed into the hallway and picked up the throwing knife that slipped out of Vincent's sheath. She tucked it into her vest and ran off to her room. Upon reaching it, she took off her headband and wrapped it around the titanium handle. While she was wrapping, she recited to herself a verse out of a Japanese poem she remembered after what just happened. Later she would have Drifty, head of the armory, make her a titanium sheath for it. She would always carry the knife strapped to her thigh, like a talisman that guaranteed her safety. Three months passed since that day.

4300 hours (planet time) November 30, 2201

Once the convoy entered the boulder-littered valley, The Base came into sight. It was an absolute contrast from what Vincent saw on his first visit. Thanks to his help defending the first supply convoy from aliens, the troops found APCs, jeeps, a tank, and even a Combat Supply truck they packed with chunks of titanium from the CRC, weapons, and food. The APCs and the supply truck were filled with thirty-six survivors (nineteen Marines, seventeen civilian) found hiding among the rubble. This supply run raised the number of total survivors to one-hundred-twenty (seventy-eight military, forty-two civilian), and made it possible to make a more formidable base.

It took the survivors three months to turn The Base into what it was now. Half of the survivors worked the night shift while half worked the day shift. Under Corporal Miller's directions, rocks were gathered and laid out to form molds. After that the titanium chunks were melted and pored into the molds. When the rocks were removed, the survivors feared much less for their lives because now they had two-inch titanium protection.

From above, The Base looked like a tuna can enclosed by a tall and thick ring. The can, called The Complex, was two-hundred feet in diameter and ten feet tall. It was designed to house eighty-seven people with twelve by twelve square foot rooms, include Operations, Medical, an Armory, a Cafeteria, and a four-cell Jail. The first two months was spent on making The Wall's and The Complex' exterior; it took another month to furnish the interior of The Complex. Thirty feet away from The Complex stood The Wall. It was thirty feet wide and the walls were an inch thicker and a foot taller than The Complex to which it was connected by four underground tunnels. The Wall's purpose was to prevent any aliens from sneaking into The Complex. There were two sliding titanium "doors", both on the northern end of The Wall. One led outside The Base, the other to the space between The Wall and The Complex. There were ten soldiers on two jeeps that stood back to back inside the southern end of The Wall, ready to meet any alien with a load of lead. The roof's of both The Wall and The Complex had sandbag barriers for the patrols. Two sandbag towers were positioned on The Complex and armed with miniguns manned by the BDF "Base Defense Force" (the Marines picked up on the first supply run). The main responsibility for patrolling and keeping watch on The Wall and Complex was entrusted to the BDF. When the combat alert level went up – Colonel Golmud sent infantry reinforcements. A four-man Army inspection squad was also stationed on The Wall at all times.

The operations coordinator in the head APC (also the Sergeant in charge of the convoy) called up The Base on his radio.

"APC - one to Base, prepare for rapid inspection. We are carrying casualties requiring immediate medical attention."

"We read you APC - one. Inspection team is aware of your quick coming. Welcome back troops."

"Always good to hear your annoying voice, Gadget."

Gadget smirked. "See you soon."

Gadget, being the only person in The Base with genius-level technical knowledge, was the temporary dispatcher. He took care of all communications, computers, and radar systems. Located in operations, Gadget checked his radar display and noticed that there were four, three medium and one large, blips approaching The Base. He believed that the blips were the supply unit but there was always that small chance that they were not.

"Brontern, you've got an incoming convoy."

"-shut up! Beret, I said SHUT THE HELL UP!" thirty-eight year old Sergeant "Anvil" Brontern was the highest-ranking soldier on The Wall. At five-feet and eight-inches, the African-American Sergeant was not the tallest but he was muscular, and his harsh character made him the most fearsome commanding officer in The Base, second only to Golmud. He earned respect and his promotion to Sergeant by keeping the survivors, picked up at the ruins of the CRC, alive. Only the Colonel and Beret were at ease with the Sergeant. "Sorry, man. Beret's being an asshole again. You said an incoming convoy?"

"Yeah. In fact, they say that Foxy's with them. APC - one said Foxy need's 'medical attention'. So make the welcome snappy."

"I hear you loud and clear Gadge. Wall out." Sergeant Brontern changed the frequency on his radio and made arrangements for the incoming convoy. "All troops, I repeat, all troops get hot! Our weekly pizza delivery is on its way. Inspection squad, on those sandbags! Tower, pizza's comin' from the north. Cover that area with them six-barreled pea-shooters."

Brontern changed his frequency back to Operations' to notify them that everything was ready.

"Gadge, you still there?"

"Yeah."

"We're ready to party, man."

"Ok, let me know when you want that door opened."

"Gotcha Ga-" the Sergeant was interrupted by a shot followed two seconds later by a loud burst of laughter. It came from the six-foot five-inch figure of Private First Class Fyodor Alexeyevich Beret, holding a spotting scope. He was one of the Marines that held out, under Brontern's command, at the ruins of the CRC. He always made fun of everyone and everything. "_Now_ what are you laughing at?!" demanded Brontern.

Beret could not answer because he was laughing so hard it was challenging to even walk straight toward the Sergeant. Every time he opened his mouth he laughed even harder.

"He…I can't…Sarge I…I can't talk…" was all that Beret managed to squeeze out of himself.

He was now laughing so hard he could not even say anything. When he approached Brontern, he pointed behind him at a soldier with his sniper rifle and tried to say something but laughed even harder. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and he had a hard time taking breaths between laughs. Beret leaned on the sandbag barrier on the wall, slid down, and was holding his stomach, trying to catch his breath.

"Listen to me, you Russian fool. Either you tell me _right now_ what you're laughing at or I break your face." Beret's face was red as he kept laughing, disregarding Brontern's threat. "Ok. You asked for it."

Brontern swung at Beret's face but hit a sandbag because at that moment Beret, weak from laughter, collapsed. Beret's laughter was so infectious that even stone-faced Brontern smiled. Half the soldiers on The Wall who had been keeping their mouths shut out of fear for the Sergeant, interpreted the smile as permission to laugh and exploded with laughter. The Sergeant took a step back from Parrot's body, crossed his hands, and shook his head.

"Man, what's wrong with you?"

Beret was now so worn out from laughing that he could not laugh any more. He got up and stood on unstable feet, and between breaths tried to explain what was so funny.

"You see Thompson…over there with…my sniper rifle?"

Brontern looked where Beret was pointing and saw SpecOps sniper Private Thompson. He was built like a gymnast who could run a marathon every day. He was one of the two operatives that did not go on the mission with the rest of SpecOps. Balancing Beret's smoking .50 caliber sniper rifle on his shoulders, Thompson furiously glared at its owner. Realizing that he was SpecOps, Brontern found even less reasons to make fun of the man.

"Yeah, so what?"

"Well he is the _worst_ "sniper" that I ever saw in my life, period."

That was the last drop of patience that Thompson had. He threw the sniper rifle, barrel-first, at Beret.

"FUCKIN' MARXIST!"

Beret's facial expression quickly changed at this insult. He caught his flying sniper rifle by the barrel and neatly swung around to face Thompson. Clenching his teeth and gripping the barrel with both hands, Beret rushed toward Thompson waiting for him with a combat machete. Suddenly, Beret heard the rapid staccato of gunfire and bullets ricocheting off The Wall's titanium roof right in front of him. He was forced to stop.

"That's enough Tower." said Brontern, who ordered the warning shots.

When the gunfire stopped, both Thompson and Beret rushed at each other again. The Sergeant quickly put himself between the two men pointing his ten-gauge double-barreled shotgun at Beret and his .50 caliber six-shooter at Thompson.

"A'right ladies, party's over. Drop yo' weapons both o' you."

Beret and Thompson unwillingly obeyed, dropping knives, pistols, and rifles in front of them.

"I will be meeting with the Colonel tonight. Beret will replace me as commanding officer on The Wall for twelve hours straight and Captain Xaire will decide how to punish Thompson. DO YOU GET ME!?"

"SIR, WE GET YOU SIR!

"Now…pick up your weapons and get back to your posts, I see them pizza trucks."

Both soldiers glared at each other with hatred as they collected their weapons. Thompson was thinking about how he would get back at Beret when the sound of APC engines interrupted his thoughts. At the sound of APCs, every soldier on the north half of The Base pointed their barrels at the convoy.

"Inspection squad! Jump in five!"

Brontern's order was immediately carried out. The four-man inspection team, standing on top of the sandbag wall, picked up the rappelling lines attached behind the sandbags. The minute that the first APC stopped, the inspection team rappelled down and tried to make the inspection as thorough as possible in as little time as possible. They were looking for stowaway aliens who could have hidden themselves in a convoy vehicle. After finding nothing suspicious, they reported back to Brontern.

"This is Inspection Leader. Convoy's cleared for entering."

"A'right Mendez, get your boys back up here." Brontern ordered, then changed the frequency, "Yo Gadge, open them damn doors."

"You got it Sergeant. Oh and by the way, one of your soldiers is chatting on his radio with his girlfriend, I think."

"I'll take care of it. How you doin' there Echo?"

"Standing by, sir."

The entry team or "Echo" was composed of ten men on two M-19Z "NIGHT COBRA" jeeps parked back to back at the end of the ring opposite to the entrance. The jeeps resembled full-size pickup trucks with four (separate, not dual) wheels in the back and two in front (six-wheel drive). A four-bar (two horizontal, two vertical) roll cage replaced doors and roofs. One soldier manned the chain gun that stood in the middle of each jeep bed, and four soldiers sat in front in two rows of two. The soldiers in the second row could provide additional firepower with two machine guns mounted on the roll cage bar above them.

"Opening door." Gadget reported.

The huge titanium door quickly and silently slid to the right, all convoy vehicles drove in as fast as they could. As soon as the combat supply truck's trailer fully entered The Wall and the titanium door shut behind it, every one inside the vehicles breathed a sigh of relief.

"Three-inches of titanium – safest place on this planet!" exclaimed the supply truck's driver.

"You can say that again." answered an APC driver by radio.

"Enough chit-chat! Let's unload that truck and get into Cafeteria…as commanding officer of this unit, I order you all to be hungry." the Operations coordinator interjected by radio.

"That is unnecessary Sergeant." the APC driver laughed.

To enter one of the tunnels leading into The Complex, you had to type in a code to open the hatch leading into the tunnel, and then there was _another_ code to type in order to open the hatch leading from the tunnel and into The Complex. Each door's code was different. Once the truck was unloaded, the troops got their dinner. Foxtrot 618 was taken to Medical and after treating Chipper's and Cork's minor wounds, Dr. Gucharez prepared Malway for surgery on his bicep and back. After finding out that Malway will stay in Medical for at least two days and have to follow up with physical therapy, Chipper and Cork were called into Operations to report on the day's events. Of course, they knew that in their reports, Golmud would only pay attention to information about Vincent. The information would then be examined by his military advisors and a psychologist that would attempt to figure out Vincent's physical and mental conditions.

"Sucks reporting on the man that just saved our lives." Cork said.

"Reporting?" asked a surprised Chipper. "You mean tattling."

"I just don't get it…"

"What?"

"I don't get what Golmud has against Pierce. I mean if it weren't for him, we wouldn't have this Base right here. We wouldn't even be alive!"

"I heard that Pierce hates Golmud, he apparently gave him a spanking and beat up one of his SpecOps like a teenager…in the presence of Miss Yosumoto.

Both of them laughed at that comment, aimed toward the SpecOps operator. The reason they made fun of the operative is because that operative picked on everybody without any apparent reason. He was Golmud's personal bodyguard and was blindly loyal. Vincent "moved" him because he made the mistake of standing in his way. The recon squad Chipper was a part of was the closest thing to special forces next to SpecOps in The Base. Chipper became this operative's enemy after he refused to humiliate himself in order to be treated as an equal among the Army SpecOps platoon.

As Chipper and Cork neared their destination, they saw Captain Xaire talking with Major Wallace by Operations. Upon seeing Cork and Chipper, Xaire stopped talking and turned his attention toward the two Marines.

"I heard about what happened today. You should be proud of yourself Corporal Cork. Leading two men against a horde of eighty is truly worth recognition."

"Thank you, sir. The victory is due to multiple factors and I really don't deserve the recognition, sir."

"Sure you do," interrupted Wallace. "I will recommend a promotion, Cork."

"With all due respect Major, we had several advantages over the aliens. We were armed - they were not. We eliminated the Majority from the top of a cliff that they had to climb. And finally, just when we were about to be sent to hell, Vincent killed the last five xenos in about three seconds. If anyone, the cliff and Mr. Pierce deserve to be promoted. I'm actually ashamed of myself for not using my advantages to their fullest extent. Sir."

Xaire was red with rage. He did not like it when his Army Special Forces' worst opponents, the SPIDERs, were praised for some act he always believed SpecOps could do better. Fortunately Wallace noticed Xaire's anger and spoke to keep the Captain from spilling out his rage.

"Corporal, you do realize that you will have to report this to the Colonel."

"We were on our way sir."

Chipper, who kept quiet the whole time, noticed that Xaire was holding some kind of blueprints and a thick folder titled 'reports'. Although there was no reason to be alarmed - after all the head of SpecOps should have access to The Base's plans in order to coordinate a good security policy - Chipper felt that something was out of order. He could not exactly say what was wrong with the papers, but his honed pilot's instinct saw it. After Wallace and Xaire left, he shook his head to clear his thoughts but still could not point at what he felt was wrong. Cork noticed Chipper's thoughtful gaze.

"Its ok man, don't pay attention to Xaire. He just hates Vincent because he beat up one of his men and because he's a SPIDER."

"No it's not that…"

"What is it then?"

"No. Nothing…" Chipper didn't want Cork to ask more questions so he finished the conversation by blaming it on his suspicious nature. "Just being suspicious again. Let's get debriefed."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: The Great Alien Deluge**

"_I have my orders." "Mind telling me what they are?" "…to use all BDF personnel and equipment to protect this base."_

_-Beret, Tower gunner_

4715 hours (planet time) November 30, 2201

Two hallways away, Wallace and Xaire were having suspicions of their own.

"-was supposed to be only a backup plan - not a long term camping trip. The Army should've extracted us by now."

"Yeah I know, but the unexpected appearance of this SPIDER is what changed their priorities. Our last orders from the brass-"

Wallace was interrupted by the thumping of a loud and rhythmic bass.

"Since when do we have dance clubs in The Complex?" asked Xaire.

"We don't. It's coming from Sky's room. She's having another one of them stupid parties with her over-privileged friends. Speaking about Sky, I don't think we should have privileged people in here."

"Agreed. I would enjoy seeing her status shattered. After all, now that her daddy is technically worm-food, his puppy should get a new leash."

Wallace was about to tell Xaire that that was the most pathetic attempt at a joke he ever heard, but he was cut short by Xaire laughing at his own joke.

"_Dumb soldier…_" the Major thought.

Sky really _was_ having a party. She had, other than herself, six girls ages ten to eighteen. The girls usually danced until either they were tired or the playlist ended, stuffed themselves with chips and candy (contraband obtained by Beret and the head of the Supply Convoy and passed out _only_ to the girls), and then gossiped. This time, after a round of break-dancing to fast-paced Japanese techno, the girls grabbed bags with chips and a girl of thirteen years of age broke the latest news that seemed important to her.

"Did ya hear that Maya and Dustin are dating?!" she said referring to her sister.

"Didn't she like breakup with a dude out of SpecOps like last week?"

"Yeah…she said he was boring and mean, but Dustin is like sooo cool. Can you believe, he even agreed that my hair is better than Maya's!!" at that exclamation she wildly shook her hair.

"After your sister's boyfriend? Again?!"

"Nah. I like his best friend Chipper, though." she fluttered her eyelids. "He's sooo hot!!

"Your always after the hottest guys in The Base," noticed the oldest girl of the gathering. "speaking of guys…who do you think is the hottest guy in The Base?"

"Chipper!"

"Yeah Chipper for the win!!"

"Whatevah, no soldier can even touch Beret!"

"You mean 'Parrot'?" laughed the girl with a crush on Chipper.

"Christy, you're just jealous! You know that Beret won't even look at you. After all _I_ am the only _natural_ blonde in this whole flippin' Base!!"

"Like that means anything! You are eighteen and _I_ am fifteen! I'm younger than you!!"

"See! You _do_ like him!!"

Before "Christy" could retort, Sky cheerfully voiced her own opinion.

"Well regardless who's is younger and who's a natural blonde, you forget that he doesn't like either of you because he likes ME!"

"Sky..." Christy mockingly scolded tilting her head.

"But he does!"

"Sky, we were just joking. He doesn't like either of us or you…probably has a girlfriend back home on Earth-"

"I hope she died." said the eighteen year-old.

"-I mean why would a cool dude like Beret like any one of us? Probably thinks that we are stupid brats."

"He comes down here _only_ to report to Golmud. He even sleeps on that flippin' wall."

"Ok if you don't believe me, I'll call him."

She took out the only means of communication in The Base - a small military communications handset, modified by Gadget to have limited, local, phone-like capabilities, and automatically dialed a number without even looking at the keypad. Then she activated the speaker mode and waited for Beret to pick up his radio.

While Sky was still break-dancing, Beret was having exactly the opposite kind of fun that Sky and her friends were having.

4695 hours (planet time) November 30, 2201

"Yo Tower, point your flashlight toward that big rock over there."

Strangely, when the projector shined in the direction requested, Beret did not even look at the now illuminated rock. While his head was pointed in the general direction of the "big rock" his eyes were scrutinizing a pile of rocks to the right. He was looking for something.

"_Damn! This is bad…_" he thought.

"All right, now give me a slow nine to three sweep."

"Hey Beret, if you're just trying to keep us busy, can you do it some other way?"

"I have my orders."

"Yeah?" skeptically asked the projector operator. "Mind telling me what they are?"

"Ok first off, no matter what I command, your orders are to carry out the command…my orders are to use all BDF personnel and equipment to protect this base."

It became unusually quiet both among the soldiers and the surrounding environment.

"Any more stupid questions?"

Without any more words, the air was filled again with the ambient sound of patrolling soldiers and squeaking of projectors. Beret followed the beam as it performed its sweep and when it began sweeping back, he activated his COM and made the following order.

"All snipers, I repeat, all snipers spread out evenly and focus your attention on ridges and valleys cutting through the surrounding mountain barrier. Copy?"

"Affirmative Beret, Bravo's in position."

"Copy that sir, Gold is standing by."

BDF's Gold squad and Bravo squad were two squads composed of eight Marine snipers. Beret definitely was taking his job seriously. Perhaps even _too_ seriously. When Brontern was in command, he usually gave some orders and added that once those orders were carried out, they had to be repeated. Since Beret took his post as temporary commander of the BDF, after his orders were carried out, he gave new ones. It was like he was looking for something. Unusually, he didn't make a single joke since Brontern left. This was _highly_ unusual for Beret who spent every second of his existence being on someone's nerves or making fun of something.

Right now, he was scanning the part of the horizon which was not illuminated by the projectors. It looked almost as if he could see in the dark-

"Sir?"

Beret glanced over his shoulder to see brown-haired, brown-eyed Corporal Kendra Arriba, more commonly known as "K". Out of The Base's forty-three military personnel, she was one of six females and the only female sniper; she was part of Bravo team. Based on her accent, Beret always assumed that she was British.

"What is it? Oh, and it's 'Beret', not sir. _You_ are the ranking officer"

"Are we going to be ok?"

Beret raised an eyebrow at the simple yet at the same time strange question his superior asked and turned around to notice the concern in her eyes.

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, because you're strange today…you're not yourself you know? You're very serious."

"I've been given a very important job…commanding forty-one soldiers is no walk in the park."

"Please don't lie to me Beret…" Beret turned his attention back to the surrounding rocks. "The only time I saw you so serious, is five minutes before we were attacked by aliens at the CRC ruins. You helped Sergeant Brontern and us survive until that convoy picked us up. I'm worried Beret."

"Pure luck and a life saving coincidence, eh?"

"I may be a woman, but I am _not_ stupid. Don't underestimate me. In fact I've noticed things that even _men_ have not noticed. Take yourself for example. You fight better than any soldier I have seen here, and yet…you're still a Private. Were it not for your intuition, or whatever it was that helped you feel an attack before it occurred, we would've been dead."

"Uh-huh…" came the absent-minded reply.

"You still didn't answer my question." she said, slightly hurt that he was avoiding an honest answer.

"Yeah Corporal, we'll be alright."

"It's 'K', not Corporal."

Beret was, unintentionally, not paying attention. Instead his attention was directed toward the rocks being scanned.

"Beret, I um-"

Whatever she wanted to tell Beret would have to wait because his COM rang.

"Sorry." he apologized while taking out his radio. "Yeah?"

"Beret, It's me Sky! 'member last week?"

"Well if it isn't the Samurai Princess herself, I'm honored."

Kendra, her back facing Beret, smirked and pulled back the bolt on her battle rifle.

"Of course I remember, you asked so many questions that day!" He added.

At that, Sky gave the girls, bunched up around the black device, an "I told you so" look.

"Well I showed you the knife that Vincent dropped an' you said it's a combat knife. Does that mean that it's like a throwing knife?"

"Definitely, Sky. By the way, Brontern nearly kicked me off The Wall when Gadget listened in on our last conversation several hours ago."

After adjusting her night-vision red-dot scope, Kendra aimed at a rock 100 meters off, and in her imagination the rock morphed into Sky.

"Can you teach me how to throw it?" Sky asked ignoring his warning about the possibility of being eavesdropped on, again.

"Sure! I'll be down in Operations tomorrow for a briefing and after that I have a thirty-minute vacation before I have to return to my duty on The Wall."

"Sounds great Beret!"

Before Beret could answer he heard a loud three-round burst behind him. Kendra got so involved in listening to Beret talking to a girl named "Sky" that she forgot she had a loaded weapon. When she heard a faint cheerful voice coming from the com, she instinctively fired at "Sky"…that is, the rock. Kendra's shot was technically a violation since, due to an ammunition shortage, shooting was allowed only during combat. Warning shots could be fired _only_ by the Tower miniguns and practice shots were allowed only for snipers. She looked at Beret with her most apologetic face.

Beret snapped around.

"Arriba, what the hell-" then he saw them. "Bugs at six! Shit…"

When Kendra fired the burst, she startled five aliens hiding behind the rock. When those aliens screeched and changed their positions, they started a chain reaction involving around three-hundred aliens changing their positions. It looked like a busy giant ant hive. Kendra shuddered. Beret took minimal measures.

"Tower! Light!"

"Operations! This is Private Beret. I need to speak to Sergeant Brontern." Beret spoke into his com.

"Brontern's here, what is it boy?"

"Sir, situation's critical up here, Arriba spotted and fired at some bugs, pissing off several hundred of the bastards hiding in surrounding rocks."

"Action taken?"

"We have two projectors scanning their positions forcing them to hide for the time being."

"What _is_ their position?"

"N1 sir. South side of The Base-"

"I know where N1 is!" said an annoyed Brontern. "I want both M-19Z's in The Wall to engage the enemy."

Beret looked over the soldiers under his command and then the illuminated rocks harboring the xenomorphs.

"Thank you sir, for not reporting my actions."

Beret turned around and saw Kendra looking down at her weapon.

"What's there to report on? You're a sniper."

She raised her head and read Beret's eyes to compare what he just said with what his eyes were saying.

"So you do care about me…don't you?"

Beret was saved from having to answer _that_ question because Brontern asked for confirmation that his orders were understood.

"Negative sir. Our NIGHT COBRAs are lightly armed and the troops inside the vehicles are highly vulnerable to attacks."

"Use support from tower stationeries, snipers, and grenade launchers if you have a good supply of grenades, nothing else. Either way, NIGHT COBRAs are the only offensive vehicles we have that can take down those aliens without letting them too close to The Base."

"But-"

"Keep your ass to yourself, and execute the order!"

"I apologize, sir. Your order will be carried out." He switched frequencies. "Gatekeeper, due to the current situation, Sergeant Brontern issued new orders."

"Entry team's standing by, sir."

"There's a target in the middle of N1, at a rough guess three-hundred bugs. Your orders are to mount your M-19Zs and neutralize the threat."

"How much troops will be supporting us on the ground?"

"None, but you'll have heavy weapons support from tower stationeries, snipers, and grenade launchers."

"All right," The entry team's leader "Gatekeeper" was nervous - he did not like going up against so many aliens with only nine men and two inconsistently armored vehicles. "Gatekeeper out."

"Actually keep your channel open, I want to maintain contact with your team."

Gatekeeper, otherwise known as Corporal Ryan Gray, examined his nine-man team. He knew each soldier by name; they were like brothers to him. Since they all volunteered into the army, he personally trained them and raised their ranks from Private to Private First Class. He motioned for them to get into the NIGHT COBRAs.

"Men! Saddle-up! We are _leaving_! The honorable Beret singled out Echo team as the _only_ soldiers capable of kicking three-hundred extra-terrestrial assholes."

"It's party time!" commented a gunner

"But we aren't gonna let him down are we? We are going to shoot those damn bugs until we have nothing to shoot them with! And _then_ we are going to beat them to bloody pulps of unrecognizable alien bio-shit! WHAT DO I WANNA HEAR?!"

"YES SIR!"

Corporal Gray climbed in the driver's seat of the lead vehicle, Echo-1, and allowed himself a pleased smile.

"Sir, we are ready to move."

"Ok, Gatekeeper, stand by. Opening door in five."

Beret gave the illuminated rocks one more glance.

"_This is going to be bad."_

"Gadget, it's Beret. Open the door. And send Foxtrot up here."

"You do realize that throwing knives inside The Base is strictly prohibited, right?" Gadget asked with fake innocence.

"Damn you Gadget! Don't you have anything else to do other than to eavesdrop?"

"Nope."

"Sick bastard. OPEN THE DOOR, I don't have all day."

"Just did."

"Wall out."

Beret quickly formulated a plan of action in his head. Then he ordered "Echo" team to stop at the open door and switched his radio to the open frequency.

"Attention all troops. This is your temporary commander Beret. We are about to play a game – and these are the rules."

Operations, along with Colonel Golmud and his commanding officers were listening too, thanks to Gadget who routed the sound to the loud-speaker system. Beret's plan was pretty much simple. Each NIGHT COBRA was to make a big circle around The Base, one jeep would go west the other east, and when they would meet at the opposite side of The Base, they were to turn toward the aliens and make as much strafing runs as necessary to destroy all hostiles. This would also flush the aliens out of their hiding spots giving the BDF clear shots.

"Any questions? All right everybody with night-vision equipment, use it."

Fourteen soldiers put on night-vision goggles, the rest switched to either night-vision scopes, or barrel-mounted flashlights.

"Echo, move!"

Beret's order was immediately carried out. The NIGHT COBRA drivers floored the accelerators and steered toward the gap between the two nearest rocks. At this point, two unlucky soldiers, one from each jeep, were snatched out of the vehicles by a couple aliens, out of a group of around thirty hiding behind the very two rocks that Echo drove between.

"Beret look!" Kendra shouted.

She was watching Echo through her sniper rifle's scope when the aliens attacked it. Beret turned and saw the NIGHT COBRAs abruptly stop. He raised his binoculars and saw that his worst fears have been confirmed.

"Ambush."

One soldier screamed but was instantly silenced when half of his head was sliced off with an alien's stinger. The other soldier kept the aliens at a distance with his rifle, while rapidly backing away. By the time it took Echo to react and stop their jeeps, they were already twenty-five meters away from the fallen soldiers and the alien ambush.

"Kill them!" shouted Corporal Gray.

The minigunners did not have to be asked twice; the sound of wildly firing miniguns combined with the nauseating sound of alien limbs being torn up was exactly what Corporal Gray wanted to hear.

"Who'd we lose?"

"Steve and Chris, Corporal!"

"We should help them!" a soldier shouted.

"No!" Beret yelled back. "Helping Echo will only weaken our defense and give the bastards in front of us an easier shot at getting up here!"

"We can't just let them die, sir!"

"We won't."

"HOLY SHIT!" screamed a tower gunner.

Beret did not get a chance to ask the gunner any questions because he saw, heard, and felt a nightmarishly massive alien horde gushing through the ridges between the mountains, eight miles away, surrounding the valley that The Base was located on.

"Never knew there could be so much sons-of-a-bitch at any single location…" Beret wondered out loud with fear-inspired admiration.

He raised his radio, warned Corporal Gray of the impending danger, and ordered him to get to safety.

As he watched the aliens' attempts to dodge the chain-guns' merciless barrage, Gray's face was contorted in a mixture of grief and hatred. He could not control his anger anymore. Ignoring whatever Beret was screaming for him to do, he took out the one-shot anti-tank missile launcher AT-9C (each M-19Z was equipped with one), intended for the more serious threat on the other side of The Base, and aimed at the aliens.

"GO TO HELL FUCKERS!" and with that he fired the rocket killing all of the remaining aliens.

Then he heard what Beret was shouting.

"Holy crap." he mumbled. Then loudly, "Echo-2, party's canceled. Follow me!"

Kicking up sand, Corporal Gray steered his M-19Z, trailed by Echo-2, east. Gray tried to assess the situation but was having a hard time due to the fact that he had to focus on avoiding obstacles in the path of his vehicle.

"Beret! I have bugs on my ass and potential for road kill up ahead!"

"I see that…"

What Beret really saw was that a surprisingly well-planned trap had been setup. Three-hundred aliens were positioned outside the southern side of The Wall and were supposed to attract the troops' attention away from the important northern side. Their numbers were carefully chosen too. Too many to deploy the troops and not enough to keep combat vehicles behind titanium walls. Now with Echo's numbers reduced, the three-hundred xenomorphs split into two groups and were heading straight for the jeeps. Beret had to ensure that everyone would survive…that is all that mattered.

"ARE YOU LISTENING?!" Corporal Gray demanded.

"What? Oh yeah, uh…"

"Foxtrot 618 reporting for duty, as ordered!" said Corporal Cork.

"Position?"

"Two inches north of the gate."

"K!"

Kendra lowered her rifle from the incoming horde.

"You called me sir?"

"No Queen?"

"No sightings, yet."

"Go drop Foxy a line, and give Cork your sniper rifle."

"Why-"

"No time to explain, just do it!"

"Aye sir!"

Slinging her rifle behind her back on the run, Kendra grabbed a rope left near a box of ammunition, attached the grappling hook to The Wall's edge and threw the other end down. Within thirty seconds, Foxtrot 618, was up on The Wall and running toward Beret's position on the opposite side. Remembering Beret's order regarding her sniper rifle, Kendra took it off her back and threw it to Cork.

"Catch Corporal!"

"I already have one!" Cork shouted back as he caught it.

"Beret's orders!" Kendra said and pulled back the slide on her secondary, a 10mm SMG.

"Why does he want me to have two rifles?"

"Ask _him_!" Kendra shouted as they reached Beret.

"Cut it out you two," Beret said. "Where's Echo?"

"They're being chased by those aliens I freaked!" Kendra reported. "They are driving side by side keeping the bloody bugs in a bunch."

Without looking at the driver of Echo-2, Corporal Gray gave him a few quick hand signals. The driver understood and exactly three seconds after the silent order, both jeeps were put into gear and established some distance between each other. Then the drivers floored their accelerators and turned their steering wheels forcing the jeeps to turn one-hundred and eighty degrees on a dime. Rapidly shifting gears and gaining speed, the jeeps fatally drove through close to eighty aliens that were just behind them. The drivers purposely attempted to kill as much as possible by aiming their crash bumpers at groups of ten or more aliens, but they only succeeded in reducing the numbers of each group to one hundred.

"Beret?" Cork itched his sideburn. "Why aren't they shooting?"

That question would be remembered.

"Permission to engage the enemy!" Gray requested.

"Granted! Make as much strafing runs as necessary then return inside The Wall and stay on station."

"Yes, sir!"

Beret then called up Operations, "Colonel Golmud, sir! What are my orders? I assume you are aware of the situation."

"I am." Golmud was standing in front of 20 salvaged touch-screens assembled into one big 10 by 8 foot display currently showing the view from the tower cameras. "You handled the situation very well…until now."

"May I ask what I've done wrong sir?"

"Negative. I was going to tell you anyway. Wait."

Beret motioned for Kendra and Cork to approach him. When they reached him, he drew a triangle in the air, with his com and their headsets making up the three points. Cork nodded and dialed in a team frequency into his and Kendra's COMs, and then configured Beret's COM to retransmit the signal he was receiving to the TEAM frequency.

The sheer amount of xenomorphs in the camera feed, gave Golmud goose bumps.

"Gadget, give me tactical."

"You got it, sir."

The screen blacked out, but only for a second. A terrain map appeared, with the base in the center. Military personnel were designated with blue dots, on the left (west) were several strains of red dots (aliens) pouring through ridges in the mountain barrier and forming a huge sea of red dots moving nightmarishly fast toward The Base. Like a cancer overwhelming healthy cells.

"How many?"

"At a rough guess, some twenty thousand. Give or take five thousand."

"How long before they reach us?"

"At present speed…" Gadget's fingers nimbly ran across his keyboard. "ETA, thirteen point seven minutes."

"Present speed?"

"'bout fifty clicks."

"Can you get any more acc-"

"Fifty-six point thirty-five kilometers per hour, Colonel."

"Replay the last ten minutes…speed up by ten."

Gadget replayed the events on the tactical map starting with Arriba's three-round burst, and ending at Echo's strafing runs. Golmud paid much attention to the troops' actions. After the replay ended, the blue dots changed to their present positions. Satisfied that his conclusions were confirmed, he decided on a plan of action.

"Whose decision was it to turn over command to Private first class Beret? His worthless attempt with the M-19Zs was incredibly disastrous."

Brontern stepped forward. "Beret was my choice, sir. So was the worthless attempt."

"…it's possibly the worst you have ever made."

"With all due respect, Colonel," Brontern explained. "Beret has proven himself a very good leader in every single combat engagement that we have been through. I suggest you give him all the resources he asks for and-"

"I didn't order you to suggest anything!" Golmud angrily hissed. The he turned toward the screen and noticed two big blue dots about one mile east of The Base chasing black dots. "The soldier you assigned to command the ONLY defense we have is following your orders, compromising hard to obtain vehicles and lives of trained and experienced soldiers."

"I don't understand sir; currently _we_ have the upper hand."

"You don't understand…Gadget, replay the first ten minutes after we discovered the aliens."

Brontern neutrally watched the events unfold (accelerated ten times). Then he saw a pattern. He squinted his eyes as his brain tried to find a logical explanation to it. When his brain and logic failed, Brontern's training and experience kicked in and instantly explained the pattern. A well baited trap.

"I see that you finally reached the same conclusion that I have."

"Shit sir, we're screwed."

"Beret, you wanted to know what you did wrong?"

"Affirmative, sir!"

"Give me visual, I don't like talking to a faceless individual."

Beret motioned for Cork to take his helmet off, and turned to check on Echo. Kendra stopped Cork and took her own helmet off. She adjusted the helmet cam and put it on a sandbag in front of Beret. When Beret turned around and looked at the helmet cam, Kendra shook her head, supposedly to untangle her shoulder-length, wavy, brown hair she took great pride in. Cork smirked and Kendra's SMG made impact with his groin. He slightly leaned forward and was about to complain when she made a slicing motion across her neck and snapped her teeth at his face. He got the message loud and clear.

Gadget kept nineteen screens on tactical, but changed the twentieth in the upper-right corner to the helmet cam feed.

"Three SpecOps have already been notified."

"Sir, I do not approve of this. You are detaining one of our best-"

"Did I ask for your approval?"

Brontern slightly lowered his head.

"No sir."

"Beret, the xenomorphs have laid out a very basic trap and you have taken the bait."

Beret stared at the camera as if he could see Golmud himself.

"Your actions have resulted in the death of several members of our military personnel."

Cork frowned; Kendra tightened her grip on the SMG. Beret's expression did not change.

"Furthermore, your actions have endangered the safety of The Base and its civilian population."

Kendra eyes widened and she frowned. Cork had a temptation to shoot the helmed cam. Beret emotions held.

"You have been given a position much higher than you should have been."

Kendra's eyes were on fire and widened even more. Caught up in their emotions - Cork, Kendra, and Beret did not notice two soldiers, wearing camouflage that identified them as members of the BDF, move a few steps closer to Beret.

"This was done against all military protocols - you have breached my confidence in you."

That was Kendra's last drop of patience. Cork was beginning to seriously think about kicking the helmet off The Wall.

"You failed and according to military order 63.18a, I hereby put you under arrest."

At this point several things happened at the same time. First off, Kendra stepped in front of Beret and showed Golmud her middle finger.

"BLOODY LIAR!!"

She did not get a chance to begin swearing because Cork shot the helmet cam, spinning the helmet off the sandbag barrier. Beret saw where this was going and made an attempt to stop them.

"Hold your fire, Cork! Kendra, cool down."

"Extinguishing hell is much easier, Private!" Kendra yelled as she ran up to the sandbag wall and fired at her falling helmet.

Both Cork and Beret ran up to Kendra and restrained her. At first she did not cooperate. Then a soldier ran up and leveled his rifle at Kendra and Cork while the two soldiers mentioned earlier grabbed Beret's arms. The soldier covering Kendra and Cork, the ranking officer among the three SpecOps, did all the talking.

"Corporal's, lay down your weapons. Private First Class Beret, you are under military arrest. Follow me."

It was like somebody hit the "silence" switch. Every single soldier's gaze was on the six people between them. The only sound came from the thundering alien horde and the sound of the M-19Zs returning to The Wall. Right now, the only person who _cared_ about the xenomorphs - was Colonel Golmud.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Order of Battle**

"_Uuru tsurugi ni terisoishi,  
Mukashi no hikari ima izuko?  
Ima kojo no yowa no tsuki,  
Kawaranu hikari ta ga tame zo,"_

_Translation:_

"_Where is the moonlight that might have shone so bright,  
Shone upon the warriors' swords gleaming through the night?  
Oh, the moon is rising high in the depths of night,  
Silent is the ruined site lying on the ground,"_

_-Fragment of a song Sky remembered …when all hope was lost._

4290 hours (planet time) November 30, 2201

Vincent stopped his motorbike behind a boulder some 400 meters away from Foxtrot 618. He figured that their attention would be taken off of him by the convoy that just rolled up. When he heard doors being shut and motors being revved up to speed, he started up his own bike. When he estimated the convoy was half a kilometer on its' way, he slowly drove up to what ten minutes ago, was a combat zone. The site resembled a mass murder scene. Bodies lay on the cliff, at the foot of it and several hundred meters away.

Ever since the fall of the CRC, Vincent inspected every site were a fight between human and alien occurred. Originally, he was looking for tracks that might give him clues as to where the alien hive was; three weeks ago, while covertly checking out the scene of a failed attack on a supply convoy, he noticed something that he should not have. Since then, this was his fifth major post-battle inspection. The last four all had xenomorph tracks; they also had traces of something else. If Vincent's conclusions, based on the last four sites, were correct, this one would too.

Right off, the SPIDER noticed that the amount of bodies increased the closer they were to the cliff. He made a body count. Too many for only three soldiers, he figured. Based on his examination of the tracks that both Foxtrot 618 and the xenomorphs made, he was convinced that the reconnaissance team really did engage the aliens in ground-combat. With that issue checked-off in his mental checklist, Vincent tackled the next. He examined the alien's wounds.

Based on his previous experience, if any traces were to be found, they would be found on the aliens farthest away from the xenomorphs' intended victims.

"APC - one to Base, prepare for rapid inspection. We are carrying casualties requiring immediate medical attention."

When Vincent's radio crackled with that message, he instinctively jumped toward the nearest boulder and slammed his back up against it, pistols automatically sweeping his immediate surroundings.

"We read you APC - one. Inspection team is aware of your quick coming. Welcome back marines."

He breathed out. Vincent now seriously considered "borrowing" a headset from some unlucky soldier. He stayed motionless for about two more minutes, making sure that if anyone heard his radio and were on their way toward him, he would not be caught surprised. Satisfied, he jumped down from the cliff, bent his knees the moment his boots touched the ground, and smoothly rolled into a one-knee defensive stance. After holstering his weapons and initiating the examination of a dead alien, Vincent could not help but feel ironically about his radio going off. He is a SPIDER, the person who will execute any operation without you seeing or hearing him, a true master of stealth, and his radio just gave away his position to any hostile within earshot. Pathetic. His train of thought was interrupted when he saw two strange wounds on the body of the alien he was examining. Two gashes, running side-by-side from it's pelvis to the base of it's neck, about 18 inches long and _exactly_ five inches apart.

Vincent had seen this kind of wound before on the other sites. Due to the equal separating distance, he was convinced that the blades were somehow attached to each other. Based on the incredibly long cuts, he assumed that whoever wielded them was particularly strong. The xenomorph's flesh gave Vincent the impression that someone had torn through it with a sharp but serrated and jagged blade. Of all the ways he pictured the two blades being used, wrist-attachments made more sense.

"Inspection squad! J-"

Fortunately Vincent's finger silenced the radio this time. Nevertheless, one of his pistols was drawn...one of the most important things he had learned to the point where it was second nature, was to never let his guard down.

In all, he found that the unusual weapon had killed and wounded thirty-nine aliens preventing the xenomorphs from accomplishing an effective assault on Foxtrot 618.

"_So that's why Foxtrot survived seventy-seven aliens…_" Vincent mused.

He also noticed that all but three of the xenomorphs, affected by the blades, had been brutally butchered leading Vincent to respect the blades and their extremely efficient and deadly operator. The three that were not butchered, all had a similar wound. A cut that ran along the length of their backs from their pelvises, to their necks. Vincent reasoned that someone had, in vain, tried to remove the backbones. Perhaps with the skulls still attached. But who would want to do that? And why? Not familiar with xenomorph anatomy, Vincent was wrong about his theory regarding an attempt to remove their backbones. Xenomorphs did not have them.

After Vincent climbed back up the cliff and collected his spears, he took one last look around. The scene resembled the Grand Canyon back on Earth – bringing back many memories. When he was approaching his motorbike, he noticed heat waves radiating from it.

"_Didn't realize I overworked the bike this much. It should have significantly cooled by now._"

As if to answer his suspicions, the heat waves were blown to the right of the motorbike, behind the boulder and did not reappear. Those heat waves clearly did not follow the protocols of nature and Vincent learned a long time ago that nature was constant. Rain was wet, the night was dark, and heat waves do not just disappear. He rapidly took in his surroundings and rolled toward a boulder across from his motorbike. He came up with his back pressed against the rock and his pistol in a two-hand grip. Vincent suspiciously eyed the side of the boulder toward which the heat wave apparently moved.

"_What the-?_" he wondered. "_A beam of directed energy? Active machine's heat signature? Ghost?_"

Vincent crouched and inched forward toward his bike, his pistol scanning the left side of the boulder, and subconsciously, out of the corner of his eye, analyzing the right side. His training screamed at him for exposing his back. When Vincent was in a combat situation without backup, he was trained to move and operate extremely carefully - always making sure his back maintained contact with something stationary and big. Like a rock, a wall, or a vehicle. Suddenly, he heard an eerie mix of a clicking and hissing sound at the same time. Having never before encountered anything this unusual, Vincent's combat-honed instincts ordered him to throw a grenade behind the boulder, and cover both sides with pistols until the grenade detonated. Even though he was not sure what 'it' was, Vincent felt that 'it' was intelligent and dangerous.

The SPIDER was now halfway between the boulders.

"_This'd better be fast._"

Keeping his pistol and eyes trained on the last known location of the heat wave, Vincent pulled out a PDA out of his hip pocket and turned it on. Just as he _did_ glance down to remote-start his bike, the heat wave moved with amazing speed from behind the right side of the boulder and toward another one. This time, the soldier saw it long enough to recognize that 'it' was not a heat wave but a humanoid 'being' using some kind of light-bending camouflage. Training took over and Vincent dropped the PDA and pulled out his second pistol all while rapidly firing away with his first. The .45s hit something vital, because the being decloaked mid-stride, exposing a feminine humanoid with a strange helmet and something resembling dreadlocks. Vincent felt fear and relief at the same time. Relief that he didn't have to fight with a ghost but with something more or less real, and fear of this apparently dangerous, intelligent, and well-developed creature. 'She' kept running. Out of ammo, his first pistol's slide locked back and he dropped it.

Vincent raised his second pistol and opened fire. The alien dove toward the boulder she was running for, turned her sphinx-like head toward the SPIDER, and made that clicking sound again. Time seemed to slow down for Vincent's fast reflexes. Three laser beams briefly blinded him, and then shifted to his pistol. The alien twisted her body and a contraption resembling a small cannon on her shoulder swiveled toward Vincent and fired. He jumped back toward his bike but the plasma beam was faster, hitting and melting his pistol's barrel. The SPIDER dropped the sizzling pistol's leftovers, and peeked out from behind the boulder - witnessing the most perfect landing he had ever seen. Just as her fingertips grazed the sand, she curled up into a ball and literally rolled behind the rock. Once behind it, she unfolded her limbs with practiced precision and perfect timing, resulting in a one-knee stance supported by her fingertips. Miraculously, the female blended into her surroundings again. Vincent quickly moved back behind the relative safety of the boulder.

"_So I _didn't_ break anything. She decloaked on her own._" He mistakenly thought.

Actually, he _did _destroy an energy-transfer component that powered her light-bending system, only she was one battle-hardened alien. She had a backup system. Deciding to confirm her position, Vincent peeked out from behind the opposite side of the boulder. To add to the disadvantage that he barely got a glimpse of her, three laser beams shot out of thin air, near the general area she was last spotted by the SPIDER, and rested on his torso. Fortunately he jumped back as soon as the lasers appeared; otherwise he would have been toast. Two plasma bursts grazed his boots and turned the sand where his feet rested a second ago into glass globules.

Vincent picked up the intact pistol, and reloaded it. Not wanting to give the alien an advance warning about his intentions, he did not chamber a round. The soldier already knew that she was combat-trained to the bone, which meant that she was not behind the rock he last saw her behind. He had to draw her fire in order to locate her new position. Taking a breath, Vincent darted between boulders. He breathed out and listened. He heard nothing. No shot, no sound, no nothing. If she trained in stealth techniques, the light wind that was picking up would perfectly cloak her already soft footsteps, he reckoned. It was logical to assume that she heard the SPIDER run, so he racked his pistol's slide. Deciding to expose himself longer this time, Vincent ran for a boulder twelve meters in front of him, covering the distance in a little over a second. He still heard nothing. She had the upper hand now.

Vincent braced his back against the boulder and scanned gaps between the rocks on his left and right. Suddenly, he saw a mirage dart between two rocks on his left. He fired and missed. At this point she could have kept running, or stayed put. Vincent could not take any chances so he traced her probable route with his pistol, three seconds later she blinked past farther to his right than he estimated. The SPIDER fired again, in vain. A quarter of a second was all it took for her to dart passed. Her tactics forced him to twist and turn every time she zoomed past from an unexpected angle. Then, just as suddenly as her peek-a-boo game started, she stopped appearing. Five excruciatingly long seconds passed.

"_She's messing with my head. Smart girl._"

Then Vincent noticed his mistake. While trying to locate her, he stayed put and every time he was about to move, her sudden appearance made him forget his intentions instead focusing on her. He quickly checked his surroundings. The SPIDER's back was covered, pistol loaded. He scanned his pistol from left to right.

"_Clear. No, wait. Where would I be?_"

Vincent looked up and saw her mirage jump up from the boulder he was using for cover, hands spread like wings and knees brought up to her chest. The soldier pushed himself away from the rock and turning around mid-stride, ran backward and emptied his clip at her head. Since both were moving and she was camouflaged, the majority of Vincent's shots missed but three bullets pinged off her helmet, violently jerking her head. His pistol clicked empty. Uncloaking, she crashed her feet into the sand, recently occupied by the SPIDER, with a fierce growl. It sounded like one of a pissed off female tiger, perfectly conveying her emotions. Vincent threw his pistol at her in a futile attempt to distract attention from him, and ran toward his bike. The alien easily avoided the flying weapon and arched her back, lifted her chin, and gave a truly majestic roar. So bloodcurdling was the roar, that even a tiger would empty it's stomach's contents in fear. Vincent jumped-on his bike and started the engine. Fish-tailing around the rock it was parked by, he rapidly accelerated toward the now cloaked alien. In the few seconds it took Vincent to reach her, the alien fired several shots at the rapidly approaching bike. All her shots missed the wildly swerving SPIDER. A split second before the bike should have connected with her she jumped up, planted her feet into the boulder behind her, and pushed-off toward Vincent knocking him clear off his motorbike. The heavily damaged motorbike bounced off the boulder and Vincent was knocked down - hard. In a split second, the alien straddled his waist and pinned his hands down to his sides. Then she uncloaked. Making that clicking sound again, she stared down at his chest, as if she could see right through it.

Vincent could not believe his eyes. If he had not known better he could have sworn that this was just a very tall human female in a costume. But he clearly saw that this was a real alien, and while her body did resemble a human female, she was way more muscular, trained like a combination of Native American and Spartan combat technique, and also had some slight anatomical differences with humans in general. He made an attempt to remove his hands from her grip, but she only gripped them harder and sunk her wrist blades in the sand.

"_Whoa…_" Vincent reacted. "_She's the one that killed all those xenos. Why isn't she killing me? If she wanted to kill me…she would've done that before I saw her._"

In two seconds Vincent flipped the tables, literally. He stared straight into her visor and took a deep breath through his nose. The alien, realizing that the SPIDER was about to do something, retracted her blades - exactly what Vincent expected her to do. With a yell, he slid his hands, gripped by the alien, away from his body. Her chest slammed into his, and Vincent rolled sideways so that now she was under him, her legs still straddling him. She threw a punch at his face; he easily caught and twisted it. Three laser beams appeared on his forehead, and with his free hand, Vincent wrenched the cannon off its base. It still fired a stray shot at a nearby boulder. Taking advantage of the distraction, the alien hooked her leg around his neck and pushed down. Now she held Vincent's arm between her legs. She pressed her knees down on his chest simultaneously pulling and pressing his hand toward her chest.

"_Shit, she's good!_"

Normally anyone unlucky enough to be on the business end of this cross-arm lock would either be helpless or about to have their elbow dislocated and wrist broken. Vincent would have normally already gotten out of it, but from the moment that he saw the alien uncloaked, he was in shock. He could not believe he was actually in contact with a previously, he assumed, unknown intelligent alien. He shook his head, clearing all irrelevant thoughts, and let his training take over.

In a lightning fast move, Vincent rolled backward over his head. The force of his backward roll, twisted the alien onto her stomach. She instinctively let go of his hand, pushed herself off the ground, and swung at the SPIDER, - forcing him to roll out of the way. When Vincent came up - she did not easily give up her initiative and did not let him attack. She followed up by extending her wrist blades and wildly swinging at Vincent. All he could do about the first two swings was duck. Then he deceived her by faking a move to the right. She swung the air where she thought his chest was supposed to be, Vincent ducked under that hand and rolled behind her. He menacingly pulled out his 10-inch combat knife and swung at her back. Unfortunately for him, after the alien swung, she kept on turning. Instead of her flesh, his knife met her wrist blades – which neatly sliced through it.

"_What the hell?_"

The SPIDER was not used to people being this fast. He also did not expect any blade, regardless of sharpness, to cut through a knife made out of military-grade titanium.

Her swing however, while successful at disarming the soldier, was too fast. The force of the swing sent her right arm slamming into and rotating her torso. Vincent spun and his heel solidly connected with her shoulder-blade, spinning her even more. She lost her balance, and while trying to anchor her feet - tripped over herself and fell back. Vincent's philosophy labeled this situation, considering the fact that the alien was female and knocked down, as the end of the fight. If the alien had been male, he would have called the fight "over" only when his opponent was dead. Females he did not fight often, the only fights were sparring matches between him and the only female SPIDER, back when the team was on Earth. He slightly raised his palms and backed away from her, showing that he has no intentions of finishing this fight. Big mistake. She raised both arms and four blades shot toward him.

"_Damn!_"

She wisely shot two blades toward his feet and two at his chest. If the first pair missed, the second would not. The SPIDER rapidly slid his feet away from each other and the blades harmlessly flew between them. At the same time, Vincent tried in vain to duck out of the way of the other two blades. One blade ripped through his left deltoid, the other sliced through his left trapezius spinning him like a top. He dropped on his knee and grabbed his injured shoulder. It was warm and sticky.

To his relief, he noticed one of his pistols twenty meters in front of him, its' slide locked back. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the alien six meters behind him - standing and eyeing him with her head tilted as if she regarded him as an oddity. She made a clicking sound when she saw him turn around and menacingly began approaching him. Vincent pushed off the ground and ran as fast as he could. He did not waste time on slowing down to grab the pistol, instead he ran past it sweeping it off the ground, and swiftly reloading it. The SPIDER jumped, twisted to face the alien, and fired. Into the air frankly, because the alien crashed her shoulder into his stomach, tackling him. He reluctantly let go of his pistol.

"_She's too damn fast._"

Vincent landed and the alien crashed into him a split second later. As the impact caused her to slide up his body, her shoulder and arm pushed his innards up into his ribcage. Out of breath he coughed up blood and reached for her helmet in order to snap her neck. He barely made contact when a brutal punch to his chin sent him sliding away from the alien. The SPIDER was dazed and struggling to catch his breath, not to mention the shock he still could not fully get out of. He blinked and gave his head a light shake and was all set to get up when he saw her boots a meter above of his face. As her feet came crashing down, his roll barely cleared her boots that managed to tear through his sleeve and scrape some skin off. Her feet were slightly dug in under his right arm. The alien immediately back-flipped from the crouch she landed into, lifting Vincent's body a meter off the ground and hurling it toward a rock. When his side crashed into the rock, the soldier tried not to show that he was on the verge of collapsing. If he spent one more minute pathetically defending himself like this, she would be able to knock him out with a single punch.

The SPIDER stood up and spit the blood gathered up in his mouth. Then, bringing together what strength he had left, Vincent attacked. To his surprise, after the alien landed from her flip, she did not move, staring at him as if stunned. When he ran up to her and rapidly threw combinations of punches and jabs at her head, neck and ribs, she blocked them with remarkable ease. He was ready to collapse, exhaustion and blood loss slowly weakening him. In an attempt to quickly finish the fight, he briefly overwhelmed her with a series of punches to her chin; she blocked them all but it took all of her concentration to pull it off. Taking the advantage, Vincent kicked the inside of one of her knees. The alien involuntarily tilted to one side, and he tackled her into a boulder. Fortunately for the SPIDER, her helmet only protected her from frontal attacks, probably meaning that her race never runs from a fight and doesn't need rear protection. Whatever the reason, her skull crashed into the rock with vicious force. Vincent rolled off and prepared to be hammered to death. She didn't move. Having already hypothesized that her species don't play dead but valiantly fight until their opponent is knocked out or dead, he assumed she was just that. Upon closer inspection, he saw her chest rising and falling, indicating that she was alive but most likely unconscious.

Suddenly he heard some one running to his right. He turned his head and saw four mirages running toward him.

"_Shit. Backup._"

Fortunately, they were half a kilometer's distance away from him. _He_ could cover the distance in one minute. Fifty seconds if forced to. He knew that these creatures where just as good, if not better, than him. Leaving the alien female in front of him, he ran as fast as he possibly could toward his hideout. No, he changed his mind. He had to steal several rocket launchers from The Base. He definitely needed more firepower if he had to defend The Base or his charge inside it from more four hostiles.

The four Predators that ran up to their fallen squad leader didn't have to be told what to do. Two of them ran past her and after Vincent. The other two uncloaked and stopped at her side. While one moved her away from the rock and sat her up against his thigh, the other took out one of the tubes feeding oxygen to her helmet and replaced it with a canister containing a compressed compound made-up of a stimulant and antigen. After feeding the gas into her helmet for only three seconds, one of her hands flew up and pulled out the canister. Breathing heavily, she looked up at her two warriors and then looked around them, looking for the rest of her squad. The alien that fed the gas to her helmet, the medic, pointed toward two mirages chasing the SPIDER. She violently shook her head indicating that she did not approve of this, and lowering her head she growled a quick order into her SQUADCOM. The mirages dug their feet into the sand and ran back. Their clenched fists testified that they could barely hold back their anger. Only a hundred meters separated them from this coward who tried to kill their squad leader, and now she ordered them to halt all offensive action and return. Their squad leader went to great lengths to prove herself worthy of their respect. Her squad's loyalty was so great that they would follow her to the gates of hell if she ordered them to.

Once they reached her and uncloaked, the bigger of the two started asking permission to kill the "rodent". Her dreadlocks violently whipped around as she spun her head toward him, silencing him instantly. He straightened to attention, and lowered his head, acknowledging and respecting her command. Groggily she stood up and walked off toward her cloaked ship, cloaking mid-stride. Her warriors mirrored her every move, forming a loose box around her.

After running non-stop for two and a half kilometers toward The Base, Vincent dropped from blood loss and exhaustion. He had squeezed out every drop of energy and adrenaline fighting with the female Predator and running from her warriors. Only seven hundred meters ahead of him was The Base.

"Kill them!" he heard.

The order was followed by chain gun fire. The SPIDER was slowly fading into unconsciousness. He couldn't even let those people know where he was.

"HOLY SHIT!" Someone shouted in fear.

A jeep shifted gears and drove away from him. The last thing he heard and felt was an earthquake-like rumble. His vision blacked out.

Word had spread, by word of mouth and through personal comms that The Base was facing the same kind of attack under which the CRC fell. There was a minor panic outbreak but it was readily quelled by Golmud's assurances of safety. Sky and her friends found out by listening to their comm. They already knew the situation up on The Wall. Sky was sure that Beret was going to be arrested and was afraid that he would be shot. Not wanting to hear how the standoff ended, she clicked off her radio. Her friends tried, to no avail, to comfort her. She thanked them and asked to be left alone. She felt that The Base would be destroyed, and its people, slaughtered.

Wrapping herself up in a light blanket, Sky huddled in a corner. Her hand went down to her hip and unsheathed Vincent's "lucky" knife. She turned it around in the air admiring its shine and near perfect design. Then her finger traced over the Japanese lettering on the headband she wrapped over it's bare handle. Her family name. She was on the verge of breaking. Ancient Samurai customs mixed with her personal feelings creating a dangerous mix. The girl just couldn't handle another assault. All those feelings made her remember a song she really liked when she was little.

"Uuru tsurugi ni terisoishi," she softly sang, her voice breaking up. "Mukashi no hikari ima izuko?

Ima kojo no yowa no tsuki,

Kawaranu hikari ta ga tame zo."

She knew exactly what it meant.

"Where is the moonlight that might have shone so bright," Sky whispered to herself, with watery eyes. "Shone upon the warriors' swords gleaming through the night?

Oh, the moon is rising high in the depths of night,

Silent is the ruined site lying on the ground."

She was afraid that The Base would end just like the verse in this sad song. She knew it would happen. Her shoulders shook as she silently cried. She was confident that what she had in mind, was a worthy way for a descendant of the Samurai's to end her life.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Strange-Blood**

"_Whoa." "Have you ever seen a pyode amedha do that?" "No, leader." _

_-Medic S'nami and Squad leader Riln'dra_

The Predators followed their leader in silence. They knew better than to speak to Riln'dra without being spoken to. She was just as demanding as her trials had been, which were twice the norm. The reason for the rise in difficulty was her size. Female predators were larger and more muscular than males. Riln'dra wasn't visibly larger or more muscular. In fact she ranked last in strength and muscularity in her squad. Subsequently she went through great pains to prove herself. She was very demanding and was extremely intolerant. Talking to Riln'dra after her fight with the SPIDER was suicide.

"Uncloak." Riln'dra ordered the ship through her COM link.

When the ship became visible, she was surprised. The outer door was open and the ramp was lowered. Sitting cloaked on the ramp was an unsuspecting Predator, the ship's engineer. He jumped when the ship suddenly uncloaked. Seeing who was approaching the ship, he uncloaked and stood to attention. Riln'dra did _not_ tolerate actions carried out without her authorization.

"I don't remember ordering anyone to leave the ship." the squad leader muttered into her SQUADCOM.

Close quarters combat expert Kujhade nodded once and approached the technician. He was a gigantic warrior, even by Predator standards. Standing a towering 8'4" and heavily muscled, his name meant "Destroyer," perfectly describing his abilities. Furthermore, his loyalty matched his strength making Kujhade that much deadlier. The engineer's heartbeat nearly doubled when he saw this walking tank approaching him. Kujhade's huge tree-trunk arm grabbed a handful of the mesh covering the engineer's chest and lifted his feet off the ground. The engineer found himself staring into Kujhade's merciless helmet, custom made to fit his large head and its contours made twice as fierce.

"Why the pauk did you leave the ship?" he slowly growled.

"I'm sorry Kujhade, but when I heard that your squad was heading out to pick up your leader, I prepared for the worst!" the engineer explained.

"Breaking every major regulation in the process." Kujhade concluded.

Riln'dra saw on many occasions what was left of anyone and anything that didn't satisfy her. Seeing that her warrior was about to "punish" the engineer, she felt sorry for him.

"Put him down Kujhade, he didn't _intentionally_ break regulations."

The warrior instantly released his grip on the engineer and he collapsed like a sack of potatoes on his knees. Riln'dra appreciated the fact that she and she alone had that kind of control over this beast of a Predator. She walked up the ramp.

"Status?" she asked the engineer.

"Reactor's offline, leader, but warm, I-"

"_I_ want it back online, full power to thrusters, getting me off this rock."

Riln'dra was already briskly walking along a hallway followed closely by the engineer. To add to his fear, the rest of her squad was close behind him.

"Underst-"

"Sync the ship's orbit with this planet's revolutions."

"Worki-"

"Shut down all active sensors, transmitters, and the ship's battle-group homing beacon. I want only passive radar and receivers working."

"On i-"

"And link me up with the clan, I need to talk to the Elder. Oh and don't give me audio again, I want to see who I am talking with this time."

The engineer ran through a side passage without another word. He knew that all this would take at least half an hour done if by the book, but Riln'dra most likely wanted it done in ten minutes or less. And she didn't tolerate any violations even though five minutes ago, she spared his ass and gave him a second chance. A first for a demanding female like Riln'dra. If the engineer didn't follow her orders to the letter from now on, things would get real nasty, real fast.

Riln'dra had already slowed her pace. She was worn out and wanted nothing more than a few hours of shut-eye. With the situation on the ground, _that_ was not an option. Riln'dra mentally cursed. Sensing the tension behind her, she knew that her men had lots to say.

"Anyone have a sudden urge to speak?" her question ended up sounding like an order.

"I do, leader." answered S'nami, the squad's medic.

"Out with it." Riln'dra didn't understand diplomacy; she only tolerated straightforwardness.

"In the week we've been here, you have killed many hard-meat. Three-hundred ninety-one according to your helmet's video-analyzing algorithm's. After foolishly-"

Riln'dra stopped dead in her tracks and dreadlocks went flying as she turned to glare at S'nami.

"_Foolishly_ you say? Tell me, what did I 'foolishly' do?"

"I apologize for my lack of control, leader. My anger got the best of me."

After another second of glaring, Riln'dra entered the ship's infirmary. Her squad followed her in. She took a seat and hung her head, while her squad remained standing, awaiting orders.

"So, you were saying…?" she asked S'nami.

"After you got into a fight between two queens you barely made it out alive-"

"I did kill one bitch and rip the stinger off the second's ass." She weakly mumbled.

"Nevertheless leader, you still aren't completely healed and won't be for another week if you don't accept my projected therapy and much needed rest."

Riln'dra didn't answer. After two minutes of just sitting like she was, she removed her helmet and set it on the table in front of her. With a sigh, she folded her arms on the table and buried her head in them. Then her head suddenly jerked up.

"Almost forgot. Kujhade and Ngun'ji, search the ship for anything that might've sneaked in."

Both Predators gave Riln'dra a slow nod and left the infirmary, efficiently searching every sector for anything not Predator. Weapons specialist Ngun'ji was the second tallest and strongest Predator in her squad, it was him and Kujhade that chased Vincent one hour ago. The only other Predator in the room, besides Riln'dra and S'nami, was Clout'ra, Riln'dra's second in command. While Riln'dra was an expert tactician, analyzing and countering anything that came her way, Clout'ra was the squad's strategist. Since Riln'dra was the squad leader, she made all the plans. Clout'ra either fixed them up or made them work. In the rare instance when he was given the liberty to make his own, they never failed. The silent Clout'ra rarely spoke, even when he did, it was usually to answer a question without a yes or no answer. Nobody knew much about Clout'ra or his past, only that he is blaming himself for some really bad accident. Right now he just stood by the door and caressed his maul.

"I still don't understand why you wanted an ooman trophy before reaching top health." S'nami said as he treated her wound. "Think how it might have ended if the existence of our race wouldn't have shocked him that much. He would've killed you like the cold-blooded murderer that he is."

"You're wrong. He is anything _but_ cold-blooded."

She tossed her helmet to S'nami who was currently shocked at this statement about a _pyode amedha_.

"Play it back."

The medic inserted Riln'dra's helmet into a slot designed to download data from the helmets. As a medic, he frequently downloaded data from the helmets to see the Predator's vitals in the middle of battles. A screen appeared in the air, and S'nami initiated the playback. The screen showed Riln'dra's hands putting on the helmet and heading to the Bridge. She sat down behind the Ops station's tactical displays and scanners.

"I was trying to locate the other three queen's locations when I got this."

_The COM sensors red-lined indicating heavy radio traffic on non-Predator bands. A live translation of the ooman's dialogue scrolled down on the squad leader's HUD._

"A reconnaissance team was redirected from its patrol to neutralize a threat. I checked the radar-"

_Her hand moved over to another display and ran through different scanning modes. Spotting a pulsing black dot near a normal red one._

"-confirming that seventy-eight hard-meats were in the area of the ooman base. So I decided to check it out. Having never seen how oomans fight large numbers of hard-meat, I decided to check out the free show."

_Riln'dra presses a few buttons and the location of the black dot uploads into her helmet's tactical database._ _Then she leaves the Bridge and sneaks out, looking both ways before crossing any hallway, and makes a mad run toward the orbital drop pods when only one hallway separates her from them. She links her helmet with the pod and the ship's pod launcher fires her out._

"R-i-ght." S'nami skeptically reacted. "Who are you running from? And look at your vitals, leader, absolutely unacceptable for battle."

"Shut up. You know full well that had any of you known, every attempt would have been made to stop me."

"Without any success, just as well as you know."

_The pod approaches the planet, slowly at first but then gaining speed at an alarming rate. As soon as it plunges into the sand, Riln'dra kicks open the front panel and jumps out. She notes the pod's location with her helmet's NAV marker and cloaks it. Then she cloaks herself, and makes her way to a boulder-littered area. She checks her helmet's HUD and it confirms that this is the area supposedly occupied by hard-meat. She spots a medium-sized cliff two-hundred meters to her left and takes cover under it. Soon enough, her helmet's motion sensor shows two kinds of contacts. Black (hard-meat) on her left and red (soft-meat) on her right, on her right is the cliff. She looks up and nods, making the conclusion that the oomans will make their stand on it._

"So I decided on a little bit of my own physical therapy..."

_Wrist blades on both wrists extract to normal length with a metallic scrape, then extend to maximum length. Riln'dra backs up to the cliff, freezes and slowly scans the panorama from left to right. Seeing nothing, she takes cover in the shade of a big boulder three-hundred meters away from the cliff, maximizing her light-bending camouflage's effectiveness._

"After some time, the hard-meat and the oomans arrived. I took the liberty of analyzing the hard-meat's battle-readiness."

_As the hard-meat run past her, she nicks one of them with her blades. It passes her but slows down, and then stops. Riln'dra peeks out from behind her cover and sees the hard-meat's head scanning the place it just ran past in short arcs of it's elongated head. Then as if it can smell her, female Predators weren't exactly scentless, it moves toward her in the slow bouncy gait common to hard-meat. Riln'dra connects her back with the rock and positions her right wrist's blades toward the side of the rock the hard-meat is approaching. The hard-meat passes the rock and then stops. The squad leader has a good view of it's profile on her right. It moves it's head to the left and faces Riln'dra. It's eyeless head moves up and down as if nodding. It senses something in her direction because it slowly begins approaching Riln'dra passing her cloaked blades on it's left. When the tip of the hard-meat's head was lined up with her elbow, she flicks her wrist inward, the tips of her blades slicing through it's neck. The instant her blades clear the hard-meat's neck, she pushes off the boulder with one foot and neatly rolls away coming up near another boulder, both sets of blades raised._

"Now why did you do that?" S'nami asked.

"Look." Riln'dra smiled mischievously.

_The hard-meat stands like a statue. Then it seems to lower it's head...which falls off, witnessing toward the sharpness of Riln'dra's blades. Now the rest of the body collapses, making a little too much noise, paralyzed in a frozen deathly convulsion. Fortunately, Riln'dra moves to another boulder before the hard-meat collapses. The thirty-seven hard-meats stop in their tracks and freeze like statues. Riln'dra only sees their backs from her position._

"The bastards probably heard the hard-meat I dropped, or they sensed it. Either way I was forced to freeze on my way to another rock. That's when the oomans got close-"

_Every single hard-meat head turns slightly to the left of the cliff, where the oomans are running from. Riln'dra doesn't see them yet, but her motion sensor shows three soft-meats._

"-and I got my chance."

_A rumble is heard behind her. Riln'dra turns and sees forty hard-meats running at top speed. She spots a few boulders in front of her and her HUD projects numbers hovering above each boulder, their heights. She jumps forward and then pushes off the ground with all of her strength and lands on a rock. Not stopping, she jumps across four more boulders in a zig-zag pattern. Just as she predicted, three soft-meats pop out from behind the cliff and kneel leveling their weapons at the hard-meat, redirecting their attention from her to the pyode amedhas._

"Leader, this is outrageous, look at your vitals!" S'nami couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Her blood pressure, temperature, and heartbeat were at critical levels.

"Fast-forward."

The computer controlling the playback, processed the command and complied. Nevertheless, S'nami could still see Riln'dra jumping, swinging and tearing through hard-meat like their was no tomorrow, in fast-motion. When the oomans were about to be killed, Riln'dra gave another command.

"Stop here, rewind three seconds and play. Now look at my motion sensor. See that? It shows a Yautja approaching the area. That is why I climbed that boulder to see how much honor soft-meat show in death, and to see who the Predator was."

_Riln'dra sees one of the oomans_,_ thrown back by two hard-meats, break his flight by plunging his knife into the ground. That motion is so sudden that the hard-meats fly past him. The second ooman, ten meters to the first's right, wrestles with one hard-meat while another's consciousness returns and it jumps to help kill the soft-meat. From Riln'dra's left, a spear flies and nails the hard-meat in mid-jump back into the ground. The squad leader looks to her left and a black blur fatally knocks-down the two hard-meats that flew past the first ooman. The upper-right corner of her HUD shows a spinning ooman motorcycle and beneath it, the specs for the spear. As the black motorbike approaches the second ooman, Riln'dra sees the driver draw back his left hand, holding a spear, and stab through the wrestling hard-meat's head. The pyode amedha forgets to let go of the hard-meat and drops a few seconds later. The third ooman just kills a hard-meat with a large caliber weapon and is slashed in the back by the last hard-meat left. The ooman collapses. The driver drops the spear and hard-meat, and this time the squad leader sees that the spears are housed in a side panel, because he takes another one out. Then he suddenly slams on the brakes and flies out of the vehicle his spear high above his head. The hard-meat turns and screeches, and then the driver plunges the spear right through its open mouth. He lets go of the spear and skids away from the hard-meat drawing out his knife, in vain because the hard-meat collapses._

"Whoa." S'nami whispers.

"Have you ever seen a pyode amedha do that?"

"No, leader."

The intercom hissed. "Squad leader Riln'dra, the clan elder is on-line and wishes to speak with you."

S'nami put on a clear biodegradable patch on her skull wound and it blended in with her skin color.

"Listen S'nami." Riln'dra approached the door. "During the fight that follows, I scanned the ooman several times, and I think I noticed something. Don't waste too much time on the fight, just watch my scans and try to figure out who it was from this ship that I caught on my motion sensor earlier."

"Understood leader."

Riln'dra went out of the infirmary and Clout'ra followed her. That's what she liked about her team, she didn't have to say anything twice. Sometimes, like now, she didn't have to say anything at all. _Her_ warriors knew their places and what their leader wanted. For example, Clout'ra knew that when Riln'dra had something to do as important as report to the clan elder, having one of her squad follow her like a bodyguard gave her confidence.

S'nami couldn't believe his eyes. This couldn't be right. He had double and triple checked his conclusions and they still didn't make any sense. How could an ooman have that kind of immune system? Or for that matter, his blood make-up was extremely unusual. Disease? Narcotics? Was he even ooman? He fast forwarded and saw the pyode amedha back away from a fallen Riln'dra with his palms up. Why is he retreating? Right, he's an ooman and he does not fight females. The oomans were certainly unusual. Didn't he know that he was insulting Riln'dra? Whether he knew or not, he got what was coming to him. Four wrist blades flew at him, two missed and two hit home. Wait, that's not right. S'nami replayed and zoomed in on the blood that gushed from his wounds. Oh pauk no. He ran out of the infirmary bumping into Kujhade and Ngun'ji entering it.

"What's the rush?" Kujhade asked.

"The pyode amedha that attacked Riln'dra is a paukin' lab rat!"

With that S'nami ran past the two soldiers.

"Tell Riln'dra that the ship is clean!" Ngun'ji shouted.

"S'nami is making up conspiracy theories again." Kujhade sarcastically rumbled.

"Tell me about it."

Meanwhile Riln'dra gave a report to the elder and was finishing answering his last questions.

"Elder, I killed one queen and the second is so badly injured that she is just about dead by now."

"Are you, _sure_?" the elder slowly asked.

"One-hundred percent, Elder."

"Can you assure me with the same level of confidence that the three remaining queens will be located and neutralized before the council discusses your promotion?"

"If you wish so, Elder, I can."

"You _will_."

She nodded. "I will."

"Next contact when a queen is killed. Are we clear?"

"Crystal."

The screen blacked out and Riln'dra rose from her knee and Clout'ra followed. They turned and approached the exit from the Riln'dra's personal when S'nami burst in so fast that Clout'ra's instincts kicked into high-gear. Poor S'nami found the tip of Clout'ra's maul under his jaw and felt his neck squeezed. Recognizing his teammate, Clout'ra instantly released him.

"Leader!" S'nami already forgot about this near death experience. "Their was no Predator."

"My motion sensor was personally calibrated by you. Don't tell me it malfunctioned."

"It didn't. The contact was that pauker that attacked you, leader."

That was it for Riln'dra. She grabbed S'nami's mesh and slammed him against the door frame.

"Call him that again and I'll let Clout'ra test his maul on your hide!"

S'nami heard a blade slice through the air and saw Clout'ra artistically draw x's with his weapon. The medic couldn't have been more confused.

"He fought in self-defense and he shares our blood!" Riln'dra continued.

"You knew? Then why didn't you let us kill him?" the medic asked.

The commotion already attracted Kujhade and Ngun'ji who stood nearby, watching.

"Because I _can_!" Riln'dra released her hold on S'nami. After just avoiding the real answer, she made sure it wouldn't be brought up again. "This issue is closed for discussion. Am I clear?"

Her squad bowed their heads down. The squad leader mentally cursed. Why did she just do that? Her team would support her even if she rebelled against the council, the elder and the clan itself. She sighed and left Operations, her team trailing her. She was so pissed off at herself, that she forgot all about the soldier. One, not familiar with the level of loyalty a Predator has to something he or she swore to, would say that Riln'dra's squad just about worshiped her. Actually, if she died, they would. Still, she tried to find an explanation to her harsh actions, in vain. They were of course unnecessary, but she would not tell her squad. Was it right for a leader to apologize? To explain her actions to an already loyal squad? They didn't even question her next move, not to mention where she was currently going. Right before they entered Engineering, she made a decision and stopped.

"Um, guys?" she cleared her throat. "Listen I-uh..." she turned to face the four warriors. "I'm just sorry for being so snappy at you all today." she lowered her head with a sigh.

Since all of them were wearing helmets, Riln'dra didn't see their mandibles opened wide. The battle-hardened pain-toughened soldiers were seasoned enough to take anything head-on but this...they weren't prepared for someone like Riln'dra to apologize for her actions. Now it was Riln'dra's turn to gape, because they all kneeled, and lowered their heads.

"Wha-what?" the squad leader whispered. "Shouldn't you guys be happy I apologized for pouring out my anger at you? For apologizing at all? Or did you see this kind of humiliation before?"

S'nami spoke first.

"I think I speak for everyone here when I say that the Council and it's code of honor be damned. From now on, leader, we swear loyalty to you first, then our clans, and finally to the Council."

Four fists thudded against their owner's chests. Then Clout'ra calmed the speechless squad leader.

"Didn't you know, Riln'dra? It is our duty to absorb your anger and rage. If not us, who else will?"

Riln'dra never heard her second in command so verbose. She was surprised how a simple apology, something no other leader would even consider, put the best warriors she ever knew at her feet. Unfortunately, the good moment for her did not last long. An alarm blared, and her squad was instantly on their feet, without her permission. They turned to her but Riln'dra nodded her approval and ran to the Bridge. Her squad ran to the armory because _that_ was a hostile proximity alarm.

"What is it K'linj?" Riln'dra asked the Ops officer.

"Pyode amedha. Twenty-eight ships. Three battlegroups. As far as I can tell, ten frigates escorting a pair of destroyers and another ten escorting a carrier."

"Have they detected us?"

"No Squad Leader. Ra'leh," that was the engineer's name. "Gave us your orders and they were followed to the letter. No signals are transmitting from us and we are perfectly synced with the planet's revolutions."

"Our options?"

"We can stealth it, inflict maximum casualties, and high-tail outta here, we can show ourselves and have them chase us straight into the Clan's fleet for a warm welcome, or..."

"Or what?" she demanded.

"Well as far as crazy ideas go, you can infiltrate the Carrier and take a trophy. Say the Captain's head?"

"As much as I like that last idea," Riln'dra replied. "I am introducing a new option. Show me the terrain in the sector currently occupied by oomans."

On a table in the middle of the Bridge, a 3-d hologram appeared, a mountain range. In the middle of it was a valley, sixteen miles wide and twenty-seven miles long. Riln'dra zoomed in until The Base was visible. Then she pointed at the side of a mountain to the east of The Base.

"That's our LZ."

"LZ?" K'linj asked.

"Yes. After you launch us, you will make every effort to attract attention." The squad leader looked at the Weapons Officer, NAV Officer, and the COM Officer. "Am I clear?" Head's nodded. "I don't want the oomans to notice me and my team."

"Once we attract their attention, what then?" asked the NAV Officer.

"Let them chase you to the farthest system you can get to in twenty-four hours, make sure they are traveling at maximum speed – I want them to drain as much energy as you can make them waste so they are slowed down on their way back. Once you reach the system, go stealth and high tail it to any one of this planet's moons. Once you get our extraction signal, pick us up."

The four officers knew that she was on some sort of mission she might not come back from. Apparently she already weighed all possibilities and realized what consequences she had to face, but her mind was made up. They stood up and saluted. Riln'dra returned the salute, turned on her heel and made her way to the armory. Once she reached it, she saw that her warriors were armed to the teeth and were holding her weapons and armor, which they helped her put on.

"Listen up men, we are going back to that rock." Riln'dra announced. "We are going to kill the hard-meat I saw approaching the west side of the mountain chain. When we are done, we will kill the soft-meat responsible for the murder of our kind."

The helmeted squad nodded in agreement. Finally they can unleash their fury on unfortunate hard-meat, and then serve justice upon the oomans.

"Ready?"

Four fists slammed into four chests.

"Allright, you know your pods. It's showtime boys."

Riln'dra turned and jogged off to the pods, her team close behind. The pods were entered, helmets linked up with them and connected to the ships NAV database. They found the LZ, selected it, and were fired out. As soon as they cleared the ship, the COM officer powered up all active radio frequency scanners, the Weapons officer warmed up all of the ship's plasma weapons, the NAV officer broke orbit and flew straight toward the ooman ships, and the Ops officer uncloaked the ship, turned on all sensors and active radar creating an unmistakable amount of signals and reflections. The oomans just couldn't miss them.

"Fire over and under them." K'linj told the Weapons officer, then turning to the NAV officer said, "Once he fires, full power to thrusters and fly in between their formation toward star system KAL-5239DS, bearing one-five-zero."

"Yes, sir." the NAV officer adjusted his bearing, found the star system in his database and flew right between the shocked oomans.

Outraged at such fearlessness, the soft-meat turned and followed the Predator ship. The carrier was on high-alert, ready to launch fighters at any moment to engage the alien ship. However before they turned and followed it, the carrier launched ten Cheyenne dropships toward the planet. The situation on the ground was going to be critical.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: A Hero, Guilty of Valor**

"_That which does not kill me makes me stronger."_

_-unidentified woman_

4730 hours (planet time) November 30, 2201

Pfc. Steve Holden madly fired his rifle in full-auto, desperately trying to survive.

"Kill them!" he heard Corporal Gray shout.

The whir of chain-gun barrels spitting lead through xenomorphs filled the air, Holden thought it was the sweetest sound he ever heard. He gave a short sigh of relief. He only had six, maybe ten rounds left. When firing in auto, one cannot count the amount of rounds fired, only rounds per second. But even that is at best approximate. On the other hand, knowing exactly how few bullets Holden had left was not really a reassuring feeling. It wasn't enough. Suddenly, he felt an earthquake-like rumble, and heard shouts from The Wall. While he was trying to locate the source of the rumble, he heard a rocket being fired and the sound of NIGHT COBRAs driving off.

"No. No! HEY! GUYS, COME BACK! CORPORAL!" he vainly tried to call for his team.

Seeing that they did not hear him, Holden froze up for a five full seconds, then his daze passed and he ran for The Wall. After clearing only five meters an alien popped out in front of him. The soldier squeezed his rifle's trigger and screamed.

_Five minutes ago…_

Five dart-like pods plunged through the planet's atmosphere and were nearly red-hot from its resistance to their speed. They were flying toward a rock-littered valley. The high altitude gave Riln'dra's PODCAM a perfect view of the base in the middle and the black cancer-like xenomorph swarm coming through the mountains on the left. Her helmet's computer estimated an ETA of fifteen minutes until they reached the base. A red light blinked above her head.

"Brace for impact." Riln'dra reminded her warriors in the other four pods.

Four green acknowledgment lights blinked in her helmet's HUD. Five seconds later, all five pods plunged into the target cliff in fast succession. Four doors swung open, and the emerging Predators rapidly formed a basic defensive perimeter. Clout'ra nodded and the closest Predator to Riln'dra's pod – S'nami – gave it a moderate pat. She opened her pod, gave her neck a satisfying crack, and activated her plasma caster.

"Clout'ra," she called. "Where's the base?"

The silent maul-artist, approached the very edge of the cliff and pointed toward a cylinder-like structure, surrounded by a wall on which human soldiers were stationed. Riln'dra zoomed in and saw two jeeps driving towards the back of the base, she increased her zoom and saw several hundred hard-meats there. She also observed that most of the troops were gathered on the side of the wall closest to the xenomorphs. The only soldiers that were more or less organized were the ones with long rifles, snipers she assumed, because they were equally spread out along the circumference of the wall. There was one male giving orders to a female with a long rifle, close to the bunched up soldiers. She seemed to acknowledge his order and ran to the other side of the wall. When she was right above the entrance to the wall she threw down a rope to three males that waited below. Then the four of them ran back to the male that gave the orders. Riln'dra tagged the man with her helmet's targeting system, and relayed his coordinates and biological identification data to her team.

"He seems to be in command. If we are noticed or attacked, he is target number one."

Then Clout'ra's sharp eyes noticed something two-hundred meters in front of the wall's entrance. He zoomed in.

"Riln'dra." Riln'dra switched to infrared and looked in the direction Clout'ra was pointing. "It's him."

Riln'dra saw the SPIDER she battled earlier, laying in a heap on the ground.

"Is he dead?" the squad leader asked her second-in-command.

"Negative."

Originally, Riln'dra was planning to find the SPIDER and recruit him as an ally in her mission, but this turn of events, including the human ships and Vincent's current status were jeopardizing her plans. Not that she told anyone about them anyway. Of course, when a female Predator makes up her mind, not much can change it.

She pointed at Ngun'ji and Kujhade, made a small circle with her finger at Vincent, and waved her forearm forward. Secure Vincent's position, quickly. The large Predators nodded their acknowledgement, shot a modified spear gun round into the very edge of the cliff and hitting the release on the spear gun's cable, rappelled down.

"S'nami, I want you to revive him."

"As you wish, leader. Your order will be carried out but with all due respect, were I in command, I wouldn't make such a decision."

"See why _I_ am in charge? Females think and give orders while males blow shit up, or as one noble Clan Head, a female, once said, 'Females rule, males conquer.' "

"Ok, ok. I feel I'm going to regret reviving it."

"Him, S'nami. _It_ is a male ooman. You of all people should know that."

"Permission to disagree, leader."

"Granted for as long as it takes you to explain."

"To be one of us is to be many things. If only one of those things is taken away, one cannot be called a Yautja anymore. Same goes for any species, even oomans. This ooman's blood, the life-bearing element in every body, was taken from one of our kind. He is ooman by flesh and appearance, but Yautja by blood. The council would've called it an abomination."

"'Would have?'"

"Aren't you going to neutralize it?"

"We'll get back to this later, until then, don't bring this up."

S'nami respectfully lowered his head, and Riln'dra switched her attention back to the action at the ooman's base. She watched as the jeeps purposely caught the attention of the three-hundred aliens behind the base. They must have been planning to destroy them all with their multi-barreled weapons mounted in the back of the jeeps because they were driving side-by-side, cleverly keeping the hard-meat bunched up.

"S'nami," Ngun'ji called in. "Area's secure. We are patrolling the area in active camoflauge."

"Acknowledged." S'nami said and fired his own spear gun into the cliff's edge, rappelling down.

Riln'dra watched his progress until the side of Clout'ra's cold maul made contact with her arm. She looked at him questioningly. He pointed his maul at the mountainous horizon in the east, directly opposite the xenomorph horde. She saw ten approaching dots in delta formation.

"Aircraft. They have radar." Clout'ra clarified and cloaked.

Understanding the danger, Riln'dra cloaked herself and the pods, following his example. Then, followed by Riln'dra, Clout'ra rappelled down.

4690 hours (planet time) November 30, 2201

Captain Katherine Shanty of the legendary 68th Naval Strike Detachment was only told that something of intelligent origin, an artificial structure, was picked up on the scans and she had to check it out. If she thought it was important, she was to secure it until the Navy returned from its pursuit of the alien spacecraft that caused so much commotion since its appearance. Her contingent of ten UD4L "Cheyenne" tactical transport dropships, designations Cheyenne 1 through 10 and callsigns Charlie 1 through 10, was only a fifth of what was under her command. She wasn't worried though because these, marked with a triangle of lightning-shaped flaming arrows with the Detachment's motto "Siempre que sea2." meaning "Wherever. Whenever.", were her most experienced veterans. Every dropship had an M577 APC with a twelve-man marine squad along with a driver and a Tactical Operations coordinator. One-hundred twenty fighting men plus twenty crew including herself, gave one-hundred thirty-nine soldiers and crew for Captain Shanty to command at the moment. If she would've taken her whole detachment, she would have fifty dropships with seven hundred personnel – six-hundred soldiers and one-hundred crew members including herself. Her dropships were nearing the planet's atmosphere meaning that a routine status check needed to be made.

"All units, report status." Shanty ordered.

"Charlie-two. Standing by."

"Charlie-three. Standing by."

"Charlie-four. Functional. Standing by."

"Charlie-five. Hydraulics 10-7."

"10-7?" Shanty asked her weapons officer.

"Out of service. Old short-wave slang" He replied.

"Charlie-six. Standing by."

"Charlie-seven. Standing by for orders."

"Charlie-eight. Standing by."

"Charlie-nine. Standing by."

"Charlie-ten. Standing by."

Hydraulics out of service meant that Charlie-five wouldn't be able to extend its' landing gear, lower the internal payload bay ramp, or operate most of it's control surfaces and ailerons.

"All right, I want two-hundred meters clearance between all ships. Charlie-five, you're gonna have to VTOL in. All other units, form up behind me. Formation – Delta Wedge."

As the ships approached the atmosphere, they formed a triangle. Charlie-five descended vertically. The others were basically being pulled in by the planet's gravity, their engines idle. Shanty fired up her thrusters and rocketed down, and her ships followed her in perfect formation. Everybody got a serious jolt for the time it took the 68th Wing to enter the atmosphere in fiery trajectories. Once they stabilized and descended to an altitude of thirty-thousand feet, the Cheyennes halted their descent and while passing a few mountain chains, spotted the ruins of an artificial structure. The orbital scans and photographs Shanty pulled up on her flight computer, differed slightly from what the ruins looked like now.

"When were these taken?"

"Ten minutes before we left the carrier, according to A.I." responded her weapons officer. A.I. was Army Intelligence, the most important and authoritative military organization on Earth.

"Seem older than that to me."

"If you mean the inconsistencies between the pictures and what you see now, let me assure you that it is just the different angles at which they were taken and which we are viewing them at."

"I see."

The site was large, nearly four acres of land was filled with enormous chunks of debris. I-beams, metal girders, and chunks of mostly intact metal skeleton gave Shanty the impression that this was once some sort of tower.

"Charlie-two through -four, you're with me. We land north of the site. Charlie-seven through –ten, with Commander Roberts. Roberts, take the rest south, and suggest rules of engagement. Copy?"

"Affirmative, Captain. Rules of engagement? You expect to run into hostiles?"

"Just a feeling but anything is possible."

"The briefing doesn't say anything about friendlies or human presence, so I'd say….shoot-to-kill anyone or anything armed with so much as a stick. Satisfied?"

"Roger," she switched her radio to the general announcement frequency. "Marines, you will be clearing the ruins of an artificial structure in T minus five minutes. Your ROE is – shoot-to-kill any hostile armed with anything resembling a weapon. A weapon is classified as anything from a stick and up. Do you read me?"

Shanty turned the volume knob down, but was too late.

"MA'AM! WE! READ! YOU! MA'AM!" her headset blared straight into her unprotected ears.

"_These soldiers seriously need to lower their gung-ho levels."_ she thought.

"It is said that actions speak louder than words…and you were pretty loud. Make sure your actions are louder."

"MA'AM! WHENEVER! WHEREVER! HOO!"

The dropships split up as ordered and one dropship from each group sent an APC with twelve marines to secure a landing zone. Shortly after, the landing zones were cleared and secured. A minute later, Charlie-five finished it's vertical descent and all dropships landed releasing one-hundred eight marines to systematically search the ruins for signs of life, intelligence, or anything that may hint to the origins of this structure. After some time, Charlie-five drifted down, released it's APC and hovered until the crew isolated and fixed the hydraulics defect.

Shanty stepped off the internal payload bay ramp of her dropship and used this time to reflect on what had happened in the last few days. Captain Shanty was a smart dark-haired woman with a precise and sharp face. Being a female officer and pilot, one would think that the brown-eyed Captain isn't as tough as members of an infantry unit but instead more emotional, and to a degree he would be right. The corners of her lips were slightly lowered in a permanent expression of grief. Emotions did guide her, but emotions formed from a grisly family past. She was also a veteran of several bad battles one of which left her right shoulder blade scarred. It was the only time she was ever captured, and interrogated. When an attempt at torture was made, a squad of SPIDERs pulled her out and blew the place up. Even that was not victory; the SPIDERs barely made it out with her. She never once felt victory in her life. The battles her detachment was sent on, normally involved going in hot behind enemy lines and holding their position while some intelligence units used the distraction to gather information about defenses. She was always told that her missions had a purpose, but what she was never told was that her men were very good bait. The Army routinely used squads like hers, squads with good men and even better leaders, to cover up their operations and intelligence gathering techniques. If only she knew.

Some of her marines had already found items of interest and their sergeants were deciding the items' importance, she noticed. Reflecting on what had brought her here, she remembered a few current events. First off, the GCP, Global Communist Party, declared war on the United States and all planets that support them. Things got real nasty. The Communists were all but captured and conquered on Earth, until some smart guy from A.I. figured out that the declaration had been bait to waste soldiers and efforts on the Communist Headquarters. Turns out they had already transferred all VIPs and politburo members to Mars, which had been quietly taken over a year before. The communists were different now. Unlike the ones that had ruled Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea two and a half decades ago, these were headed by the Orthodox Church. Several major U.S. and Earth cities had been bombed from Mars by IPBMs, Inter-Planetary Ballistic Missiles; cities, that had no strategic value. Just a shockwave of demoralization across the world, and millions of innocent people, dead.

The U.S. was pissed off and responded with the fury it possessed only on two previous occasions. Pearl Harbor, and 9/11. Those two destroyers supporting the carrier USS Lakota, which the 68th belonged to, just returned from the third major space offensive the United States led against the Communists now the "Galactic" Communist Party.

"Captain Shanty! Ma'am!"

She turned and saw a few of her sergeants holding various things. A book, a piece of lab equipment, a pistol, and…a body. A _human_ body.

"I wasn't told there were people on this planet." she angrily said. "Commander!"

"Yes, Captain?" Roberts replied.

"Is this planet in the databases?"

"Apparently not - A.I. didn't give us it's designation."

"Have two dropships scan the immediate surroundings."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Everyone else, on high alert. These poor people didn't just kill themselves."

Roberts nodded and wasted no time to carry out Shanty's orders. Why did every destination she ever visited just _have_ to have something wrong with it? Couldn't things be normal? At least once?

"Captain!" Roberts yelled from his dropship. "Take a look at _this_."

Shanty ran over to Roberts dropship, up the ramp and leaned over his shoulder, peering at the cockpit's monitor. It was the feed from one of the two dropships. She saw blackness pouring between mountain ridges into a valley flanked by mountains.

"What _is_ that? Flood? Storm?"

"Both. Some kind of unidentified extraterrestrials."

"What's this?" Shanty asked pointing at a round structure in the middle of the valley. "Zoom in."

"It's a…base? Whoa, computer tells me those dots moving in patrol patterns are humans!"

"They're alive…" she whispered. "Roberts gather my soldiers…I'm going to blow the hell out of those poor bitches." she added, pointing at the aliens.

"Yes, _ma'am_!" he keyed his radio's command frequency. "Marines! Who wants to go on a fieldtrip?"

"HOO!" they shouted as one.

"Do we need parent signatures?" a soldier asked.

"Nah, if you're trigger-happy – you qualify."

"How much do we pay?" another asked.

"Well you're lucky this time, the fieldtrip's on me! Come on! Pack it in! We don't have all day!"

APCs backed up into the dropship's ramps with hearty roars while Shanty boarded her own ship. She had victims – dead humans, and suspects – alien bastards. A pissed off girl who just happens to be a Captain in the Fleet doesn't need any more justification to serve justice, her way.

"The hell we waitin' for Roberts?" she impatiently asked.

Roberts felt sorry for the aliens. Shanty was going to blow the living shit out of anything, in this case the aliens, that stands in her way.

"Ladies first, ma'am."

Shanty's dropship rose from the ground, tipped forward, and rapidly began picking up speed. Her ships followed her in a loose flying "V" formation.

"Robert's I need a second opinion." Shanty radioed.

"Don't you always, Captain?"

"Zip it, Commander. Do we LARA or bomb them into the stone age and have the marines mop up?

"LARA. Bombing all of the aliens is not an option, ma'am, by the time we reach the area, the human's proximity to the aliens will mean that they too will suffer from our missiles."

"Thought so. Give the orders."

LARA was an acronym for Land/Air Rapid Assault. A tactic developed by Katherine Shanty and battle-tested by the 68th. It was extremely effective for taking and holding a hot zone and was an ideal example of the vital ground-air coordination that on many occasions has helped end stalemates.

"Attention all air units. As soon as we clear the mountains, release your APCs. Then Charlie-two through -five with Captain Shanty will take the left flank, I and the rest of you will take the right. The marines will take the bastards head-on."

Shanty added that the weapons officers were to use 150mm unguided rockets against the aliens, of which each ship had thirty-two, and 120mm guided rockets and AGM-220s to plug the ridges that the aliens were coming through, each ship had eight guided rockets and seven AGM-220 air-to-ground missiles.

With the valley was in their sights, the pilots sent their UD4Ls screaming in.

"_That which does not kill me makes me stronger." _a whisper sounded.

Vincent eyes shot open, his arms pushed off the ground and he was crouching with his back to a rock in less than two seconds. All this was done automatically, after he heard the air whisper. Wait, air can't talk. But that's exactly what it sounded like. He didn't hear the message close or far…he felt himself in it when it sounded. It was as if the air said something. The words were familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on where and when he heard them, not to mention _who_ spoke them. One thing was certain though, the voice was female - narrowing down the list of possible people…somewhat.

He gave himself a couple of seconds to acquaint himself with his surroundings. How did he get here in the first place? Right, he was chased away from a huge female alien, a fight with whom he barely survived, by her even bigger backup. The SPIDER felt like every muscle in his body had a twenty-pound weight attached to it. His bent legs shook slightly, no, it was an earthquake. He heard a faint sound, similar to an eerie warcry, and upon turning – noticed literally a _wave _of xenomorphs a good several kilometers away. He checked his thighs. Great, no weapons. He looked around. Between one kilometer and five-hundred meters separated him from The Base. He heard jeeps – M-19Zs judging by the noise they made. The sound was getting fainter; they were driving away from his position.

"No. No! HEY! GUYS, COME BACK! CORPORAL!"

Vincent turned and identified the voice. Nine-o'clock, four hundred meters, infantry. Status…by the looks of it scared shitless. The SPIDER noiselessly ran in zig-zags, darting between rocks that provided perfect cover for him, were he ever a target. Ignoring the general exhaustion and pain, Vincent approached the man from behind and was about to knock him out, to commandeer the soldier's weapon, when a xenomorph popped out from behind a boulder a screeched into the infantryman's face. Then, all at the same time - soldier started backing up, screaming, and wildly firing his weapon in full auto off-target. Vincent knew only one way to respond to hostiles endangering the lives of fellow soldiers. Kill first, ask questions later.

Vincent grabbed the assault rifle and shoved the stock backwards into the soldier's stomach to force the terrified soldier to release it. The soldier fell backwards with the wind knocked out of him. The alien slightly crouched, challenging the SPIDER. Vincent held his ground. The alien screeched and whipped it's stinger at him. Vincent ducked under the flying blade catching it as it swung over him, then he pulled the jagged tail with one hand and fired a three-round burst at its head with the other. The alien collapsed. Vincent released the stinger and fired at the xenomorph's neck, severing it. He felt a stinging sensation on his arm and saw that a drop of blood burned off a tiny amount of skin. This xeno's blood was caustic. The SPIDER turned toward the soldier on the ground who looked like he just went through hell. The infantryman took Vincent's offered hand and pulled himself up.

"I apologize, you ok?" Vincent asked.

"You saved my life! What are you apologizing for?"

"Name and rank."

"Uhh, Private first class Steve Holden. You?"

"Vincent Pierce, Chief Petty Officer."

"Sir! Holy shit, sir!" Holden snapped to attention. "Damn! I never thought I'd see you in the flesh, sir!"

Vincent detested his idolization. Respect and fear was ok, but when he was made a near super hero against his will, he wanted to stuff a shotgun down the throat of the person who invented this propaganda and pull the trigger.

"Listen, Private first class," he droned, pointing at himself then at Holden. "I'm a man, you're a man. Don't let me hear otherwise."

"Sir!" Holden responded.

What happened next happened so fast that even the SPIDER-trained Vincent barely caught it. Holden was lifted up into the air, pinned against a rock and something invisible was shoved in his mouth. An alien, like the female he fought earlier, uncloaked thus revealing his hand at Holden's throat and his weapon - resembling a plasma cannon - in the infantryman's mouth. Holden was so scared he didn't have the willpower to move. When Holden was lifted up, Vincent felt claws wrap around his neck from behind and rolled forward before they tightened. The invisible assailant tried to punch Vincent but only managed to plunge his powerful arms into the sand. Vincent crashed into a rock, jumped up and just barely avoided a punch so powerful it chipped a chunk off of the rock behind Vincent.

The Predator uncloaked and Vincent tackled him. The alien didn't move an inch, he only grabbed the folds of the SPIDERs clothes with one hand and tossed him a good thirty meters away. Vincent landed with a grunt, and noted a few rules about this new species.

"_Rule number one – never fight with females of their race. Way too fierce. Rule number two-"_

Vincent was lifted off the ground by his collar and found himself staring into Kujhade's cruel helmet.

"_-never fight a walking tree."_

Just as soon as he made it, the SPIDER broke his second rule. Vincent planted his feet firmly into Kujhade's huge chest and pushed off, forcing the Predator to release him. Obviously, had the close-quarters expert been under orders to kill the SPIDER, Vincent wouldn't even have a chance. Vincent landed on his back and was getting up when he saw the razer sharp point of a meter-long maul at his neck, the owner of the maul issueing a deep guttural clicking. Clout'ra and Riln'dra had arrived. Holden was sitting in front of Ngun'ji. Kujhade and S'nami were covering Riln'dra. As she was regarding him, she made an eerie clicking sound.

"You freaks could've killed me. Why didn't you?" Vincent demanded.

"As far as _I_ am concerned, _you _are the freak." Riln'dra's helmet computer translated.

Holden couldn't believe his ears. She was speaking in English!

"How the hell can you talk like us?" Holden shakily whispered.

Riln'dra loathed interruptions. She slowly turned, gestured for N'gunji to lift Holden to his feet, and then approached the terrified infantryman, stopping only when her helmet was inches away from his sweaty face.

"We have hunted your race since you were apes. Oh and don't speak again unless I order you to. Am I clear, meat?"

Holden frantically nodded, not wanting to know what this female alien was like when pissed off. Riln'dra turned back to a helpless Vincent, still under Clout'ra's blade. The only thing she hated about Vincent, other than that fact that he was a human, was his fearlessness and disrespect toward her. On the other hand, brave human males turned her on. Hunting and killing them, naturally.

"We don't have much time right now," she began. "-you have lots of hard-meat to kill, but once this battle is over, return to the place where we first met. I want to make a pact with you."

"And if I refuse?"

S'nami and Kujhade exchanged glances at this outrageous comment. Kujhade being the one serving justice on Riln'dra's behalf and S'nami fixing up the victims…if they still lived. Knowing the squad-leader's team, other Predators were careful not to offend the aggressive female without their own guard outnumbering her team at least five-to-one, but even then, they thought twice. A pissed off female is ten times as deadly as any highly trained male…alien or otherwise.

"Uh," Riln'dra pretended to think about it. "How about I hunt you down and kill you?"

"Deal."

Riln'dra's temper meter was slowly rising. It wasn't Vincent's fearlessness this time, it was the fact that his fearlessness prevented him from asking if he could get up. Apparently the SPIDER didn't care and the squad-leader didn't tolerate such indifference. Just when she was about to do something about it, a woman's voice coming from The Base intervened.

"BLOODY LIAR!!"

Then a weapon was fired at something metallic.

"Hold your fire, Cork! Kendra, cool down."

"You'll have more luck (extinguishing hell) putting hell's fire out, private!"the same woman yelledand SMG fire ricocheting off something metallic followed.

Rapid footsteps followed by the female's grunts gave Vincent the impression that "Kendra" was being restrained. Then she suddenly became quiet and he heard weapons being cocked. Three of them he judging by the noise they made.

"Corporal's, lay down your weapons. Private First Class Beret, you are under military arrest. Follow me."

Vincent couldn't see what was happening because The Base was several hundred meters behind him and he was pinned down.

"What's happening?" he asked Ril'ndra.

"Three elite soldiers wearing uniforms below their ranks and training are taking the defense leader into custody."

Three SpecOps in regular infantry fatigues arrested the troop's, who were defending The Wall, commander – Vincent clarified to himself. Then he eyed Kujhade's inhumanely massive body, especially his enormous arms.

"Can he throw me up there?" Vincent inquired.

Riln'dra smirked. "He could throw a human vehicle _over_ it."

"Tell him to throw me into one of those elite soldiers."

Riln'dra wasn't used to be talked to so matter-of-factly, in fact Vincent was doing something akin to ordering her. She waited.

"Please." Vincent added.

She wanted him to respect her like everyone else did. Who was he to treat her like that anyway?

"If you expect me to beg, you might as well kill me_ now_."

Riln'dra threw one hand up in the air and walked away from Vincent.

"Do it." she ordered Kujhade and cloaked.

Clout'ra removed his maul from the SPIDER's neck and followed S'nami and Riln'dra, motioning for Ngun'ji to release Holden and follow them. The rest of the Predators except for Kujhade cloaked. Vincent noticed Holden's condition. He wasn't a soldier anymore. Having witnessed and experienced so much in such a little time frame, he was reduced to a chunk of meat not capable of fighting.

"Holden." Vincent said. "You ok?"

The infantryman slowly nodded.

"Find what Kendra was shooting at and throw it to me on my command."

Then Vincent turned to Kujhade and nodded. Kujhade cloaked and grabbed the SPIDERs shoulders and covered the three and a half hundred meters separating them from The Base in twenty-two seconds. As the massive Predator approached the conflict area, instead of slowing down, he rapidly whirled using the momentum to send Vincent into a flying tackle. In two seconds, Vincent knocked the SpecOps covering Kendra and Cork into the gap between The Wall and The Complex, ripped the pistol out of another's hand and used it to shoot the weapon out of the last SpecOp's hand. Seeing Vincent discard the repossessed gun, the disarmed SpecOps released Beret's arm and charged the SPIDER.

Beret wanted to help but the soldiers closest to him held him back, because they knew the consequences of impeding orders. Vincent wasn't strong enough to block the combined force of both SpecOps at such a speed, so he sidestepped, dropped and swept one's feet off the ground, then gave the other a swift and powerful barrage of kicks and punches, knocking him out, cold. The SPIDER then turned to neutralize the remaining SpecOps.

"HaaaaAAAYAH! HAh! Take that you _meanie_!!"

Kendra didn't even let the SpecOps get up after Vincent tripped him. She started whipping his head and neck with her SMG. She didn't realize that her first blow caused unconsciousness. Vincent made a mental comparison between Kendra and Riln'dra, convincing himself that human female soldiers are also way too fierce.

"Kendra, stand down!" Vincent ordered.

"With displeasure, sir!" she saluted.

The SPIDER remembered about Holden.

"Holden!"

A helmet came flying up and Vincent neatly caught and tossed it over to Kendra in one motion.

"Thanks! Damn, I blew holes in my own helmet…" she sulked. "Can anybody spare a girl their helmet?"

Beret offered his own.

"Thank you."

Vincent returned to the topic. "Is he out?"

"No idea." Kendra shrugged.

"Turn him over."

Kendra put her boot under his stomach and kicked up - turning the SpecOps on his back. He wasn't moving. Still, that wasn't proof that he was knocked out…he could be pretending.

"Kick him."

Kendra moved to kick his side, but a better idea popped into her head. She kicked his testicles forcing Beret to dart past her, shoving the Corporal away from the potentially dangerous SpecOps. Fortunately, the SpecOps really _was_ unconscious, because he didn't even squeak. The sound of approaching dropships, two minutes away, forced the soldiers to look up.

"This is Captain Shanty of the 68th Naval Strike Detachment. Who's the ranking officer down there?" Beret's radio crackled.

Vincent grabbed the radio.

"Chief Petty Officer Pierce, ma'am."

"Organize your men down there while we get into position."

"On it, ma'am."


	7. Chapter 7

Vincent looked around, estimated the amount of soldiers and potential firepower and was about to give orders when a soldier manning the sandbag tower, the same who asked what Beret's orders were, spoke to no one in particular

Vincent looked around, estimated the amount of soldiers and potential firepower and was about to give orders when a soldier manning the sandbag tower, the same who asked what Beret's orders were, spoke to no one in particular.

"No aircraft ever took and held ground."

Vincent smirked.

"Where did you hear that?"

"US Marine Corps Manual!" he proudly responded.

"Take my advice – don't read that shit."

"-'cause it definitely don't apply to the 68th!" Kendra added.

The tower gunner threw up his hands in mock-defeat. Then Beret made a careless comment.

"There isn't one black op that hasn't used Captain Shanty's detachment, one way or another."

"Now how would you know that?" Kendra asked.

"Uhh-"

"Later." Vincent interrupted. "Everyone, get down. Now."

Ropes were dropped, and soldiers took turns rappelling down. Tower gunners used a plank to get across the gap between The Complex and The Wall and then they too slid down. When Vincent was sure no one was left on The Wall he joined everyone else on the ground. The soldiers bunched up around Echo's jeeps, waiting for the SPIDER's orders, they didn't feel too comfortable being on the ground facing a swarm of aliens.

"What about _them_?" a tower gunner asked, referring to the SpecOps Sergeant that was knocked into the gap between the two structures and two others unconscious on The Wall.

"Who was the ranking officer before I came here?" Vincent asked.

Beret and Kendra responded at the same time - each naming the other.

"Beret."

"Kendra."

Vincent looked at their insignia and noticed that Beret was a Private First Class while Kendra was a Corporal, a full two ranks above Beret. How a Private First Class could command when there were higher ranking officers was a question to be asked at another time, Vincent decided.

"Their fate is in Corporal Kendra's hands." Vincent concluded.

Kendra was quick to respond, remembering that the operatives wanted to arrest and/or kill Beret. "I say they stay."

"So be it. We need to get inside The Wall."

"Someone get that door opened!" Kendra ordered.

"Yo Gadget, change of plans." Beret radioed Operations. "We need access into The Wall."

"That is not an option." Colonel Golmud answered. "You have been disobeying orders ever since Brontern left you in command."

Golmud's answer sent chills down the spines of everyone who heard it.

"Oh and even if I _did_ open it, the aliens would get in, compromising the security of the civilians in The Base. So…you're on your own." he jokingly added.

"That is NOT FUCKING FUNNY!" Kendra yelled. "Open the fuckin' door, bitch!"

"Make me, Corporal. You just committed the sinful crime of insubordination."

Kendra growled.

"Listen Golmud, hostiles will be on us in less than a minute. We need that door open, _now_."

"Oh, hey Vincent!" Golmud's voice was full of mirth. "Long time no see old buddy. You too are charged with insubordination, two counts now. You disobeyed the orders of a superior officer and you attacked me. Tsk, tsk."

Everyone was on the verge of panic. They knew that The Wall wasn't going to be opened, and they saw a tsunami of blackness nearing them. Captain Shanty's dropships had already released their APCs and while the APCs roared toward The Base, the Cheyennes split into two "wings". Flying at a low altitude, they opened their weapons launchers and prepared to fire. The xenomorphs were twenty seconds away from contact with The Base. Kendra was slowly breaking. Everything seemed against them. Captain Shanty was a little late to help, her dropships couldn't fire at the aliens closest to the BDF, because they would kill the soldiers too, and the APCs were going to arrive about a minute or two _after_ the xenomorphs engaged the BDF in battle.

"Ah, fuck him." she said.

"Exactly." Vincent voiced his support. "We need incinerators and explosives."

"We have only one incinerator…but no explosives."

"Pierce!" Shanty called through her radio.

"Down here, Ma'am!"

"Move your men away from the entrance. Now!"

"You heard the lady, move!" Vincent ordered.

The soldiers and jeeps didn't even clear one hundred yards when Captain Shanty fired a 120mm guided rocket straight at the door, blowing it open.

"Your door is open Pierce!"

"Everyone in!" he ran for the door and, seeing that the aliens are only three seconds away from him, realized that Shanty saved their lives in the nick of time. "Thank you Captain." he added into Beret's radio and jumped inside The Wall – the xenomorphs mere inches behind him.

"FIRE!" Kendra shouted.

Upon landing, Vincent saw that soldiers were positioned directly opposite the entrance, the ones with machine guns and the incinerator, while everyone else took the flanks backed-up by the chainguns of M-19Zs, forming deadly overlapping fields of fire. The shooting completely droned out all other sounds, even the screeching of dying aliens. They fell down by the dozen, piling up a wall of smoking corpses. Any attempt to run past the entrance or into it was doomed at least ten feet away from it, six feet when things really got crowded. Of course, this wasn't a video game and no one had unlimited ammo. After Vincent gave the order, everyone split up and ran away from the entrance in opposite directions, the NIGHT COBRAs providing cover. When the backs of both jeeps met, the soldiers regrouped around the vehicles and if any xenomorph would be spotted in the circular hall, it would be mowed down by a barrage of everything with a trigger.

The Tactical Operations coordinator in the lead APC wasted no time in applying his experience and the tactics of LARA, designed by Shanty. As his APC drove, he made certain arrangements.

"This is Victor-one. All APCs form up behind me. Delta wedge. Charlie-one, requesting aerial assistance. Over."

"Charlie-one responding, we copy your request." Flying slightly ahead of the APCs in a similar flying V formation, UD4L Charlie-one, at the tip of the formation, responded. "Charlie-seven will do everything he can without breaking formation. When your work on the ground is finished, secure the entrance. Copy?"

"Copy that, Captain. May I suggest that ground forces secure the entrance after the area inside is secured? Over."

"Good thinking Lieutenant. Do it. No one gets in or out of that entrance before I allow it. That's an order, sergeant. Shanty out."

"Thank you Captain. Charlie seven, fire at all rocks in our path for a kilometer forward our current position. Driving around the boulders is disadvantageous."

"Copy Lieutenant, will do. Over."

Shanty: "clear the entrance so we can drive up and secure and cover…"

A second passed and eight of the twelve 70mm unguided rockets each Cheyenne had, plunged into and reduced to dust the rocks that formed obstacles for the APC ground squadron. The soldiers inside the APCs didn't see the explosions but definitely felt and heard them, cheering after each hit. The path was clear, and the APC drivers gunned their vehicles to maximum speed.

Two minutes had passed since the BDF and Echo, under Vincent's guidance, entered The Wall. During those two minutes, no xenomorph made so much as an attempt to enter it. Either they waited for the humans to exit the structure, or someone or something else got their attention. Vincent didn't like standing in a closed structure and not knowing where the enemy was. It made him feel like a blind mole in its tunnel.

"Be right back."

"Whoa! Where're you going dude?" Beret called.

"Something's not right." Vincent rasped back. "Xenomorphs don't just stop hunting."

"Maybe V, but they're probably just luring us out. What can you do against so many fuckers?"

"I can kill them." the SPIDER suggested and walked off.

"Well then, I'm coming with you."

"Me too!" Kendra pitched in.

Vincent smirked. "Thanks but no thanks. Better stay here. Something happens, you'll need _every_ soldier."

"Hey hero!" Kendra called. "You don't have a weapon."

Vincent checked himself and realized that she was right.

She threw her SMGs "Here take mine."

Vincent gracefully caught both automatics by their grips.

"You sure you don't want a few people to come with you?" Cork asked. "If you want volunteers, you won't find any better than Foxtrot 618."

"Yeah sir!" Malway yelled. "I wanna go out and kill something before I kill Chipper."

The failed joke made everybody around him turn and give the Australian their blankest looks.

Malway didn't get it. "What?"

"Every hook needs a worm. When it comes to worms, few are as good as me." Vincent declared.

"I give him five minutes," Beret said. "After that, we follow him."

When Vincent cautiously approached the entrance, out of sight of the soldiers he just left, he didn't believe his eyes.

The driver in the lead APC saw it first, and then the rest saw it too.

"Sir, you'd better take a look at this." the driver told the Tactical Operations Coordinator.

The Lieutenant was wide-eyed. "All drivers stop your vehicles." He spoke into his radio. Then he answered his driver. "'Cause I'm already looking at it. Captain Shanty, this is APC-one…please advise."

Charlie-one couldn't respond just yet. Its pilot was speechless. Shanty slowed her ship to a hover only a few hundred meters ahead of her APCs and half a kilometer away from the xenomorph's.

"You've gotta be shitting me…" she mumbled.

As if the xenomorph's invasion wasn't bad enough, they were doing something totally out of character for hostile invaders. From Shanty's perspective, the valley up to The Base itself was filled, in the most literal sense with nearly seven-hundred-thousand xenomorphs. Upon lining up with The Base, the xenomorphs stopped and just stood there…warily snarling and waving around their deadly stingers. Shanty didn't understand whether her detachment scared them or whether they stopped for some other reason.

The real reason for the xenomorph's sudden and uncharacteristic behavior was Riln'dra and her squad. They were lined up horizontally with The Base, two on each side and a mile apart. Just like staples are attracted to a magnet, so are Predators to hard-meat. They just _had_ to add a trophy or two to their collection. More or less anyway, because the real reason they were making a stand is because Riln'dra told them to. S'nami was the only one not making a stand – Riln'dra sent him on an important mission that will come in handy, later.

The Predators got the xenomorph's attention in the first place by turning off their light-bending camouflage for a split second. Fear of the Predator race evolved in the xenomorph's DNA hundreds of years ago. Their snarls, crunchy fang-snapping, and stinger-whipping filled the air, the cacophony of sounds creating a creepy blend. Riln'dra being the crazy one, or so the Council thought for her risky ideas, made her first kill in this battle by firing her spear gun into the hard-meat directly in front of her.

"What a waste." she remarked, referring to her spear gun round.

Then as was so typical of females like Riln'dra, she armed her combistick and screamed into the horde, challenging it.

"The hell was that?!" asked Malway.

Vincent knew exactly what it was. Riln'dra. Frankly, Shanty's army didn't hear anything, their engines were too loud.

Riln'dra paused for effect and then rushed toward the horde. Taking her scream as a war-cry to engage the enemy, Clout'ra unsheathed his mauls, spun in them in a few quick and precise arcs in front of himself, and motioned with both weapons for the xenomorphs to come and get him. That action restarted the flooding of the valley.

Like clockwork, Shanty's dropships rolled to the left and Robert's wing to the right.

"Don't shoot!" Vincent shouted as he ran back.

When the soldiers saw that it was indeed Vincent, they took their crosshairs off of him. A pair of xenomorphs rushed into The Wall and took and took a right. Vincent was with the soldiers defending the opposite half of the hollow ring-like structure.

"_Now_ fire."

A series of air-to-ground missiles were fired from all ships into the ridges, halting the influx of more aliens. The dropships followed up with a few 150mm rockets at the aliens farthest from The Base and upon reaching their corpses sharply turned around and flew back toward The Base, pounding the xenomorphs with unguided rockets.

The marines of the 68th ran in squadrons of twelve men between the APCs which were matching the pace of the running soldiers. When only one-hundred meters separated the marines from the aliens, smartgunners opened fire, followed by M-41A - launched grenades. It was an awe inspiring massacre. The aliens outnumbered their human enemies but the marines kept the xenomorphs at a distance with their combined firepower. The APC's own turrets mowed down scores of the parasites with automatic cannons.

The number of aliens that came through The Wall and were killed, was increasing exponentially. So far, sixty xenomorphs were reduced to steaming corpses. They came from both sides in groups of six, sometimes ten. It wasn't easy to kill them fast but manageable…for now.

"Eww!" Kendra pinched her nose. "What's that stink?"

She looked at Malway.

"What? It wasn't me I swear! Look guys you gotta believe me, I didn't fart! Those bastards did."

"No one said you farted, Malway." Cork sighed.

"He's right." Vincent deep bass sounded. "The alien's blood is caustic. It's burning through the sand. Don't let them get close or their blood will be all over us."

Shanty's aerial unit herded the aliens forward, to be met by her troops. She was doing the herding by pounding rocket after rocket at the black sea of snarling aliens. Their numbers steadily diminished. When she depleted her supply of missiles, she switched to her nose-mounted chain gun firing 25mm rounds and flying low so that her bullets would go through a lot of aliens before getting stuck in one, achieving maximum casualties with her nine-hundred round supply. Her wing followed suit, while Robert's dropships flew right on the alien's heels and continued battering them with missiles and chaingun fire.

Riln'dra thanked Paya, the Predator god, for agreeing to train with Clout'ra this year. It definitely paid off. To her satisfaction, the hard-meat hasn't touched her ever since she ran into their midst and was instantly surrounded by blood-thirsty xenomorphs. Every stinger was deflected with her combistick, every head that got too close received a good sized gash or hole, and every alien that attempt to jump or rush her only succeeded in running into or landing on her ready combistick. The squad-leader was quite a sight. The weapon she wielded seemed to have a mind of its own, spinning, thrusting, slicing, and beating unfortunate hard-meat so fast the aggressive female quickly lost track of her kills. Too bad no one could see her or the other Predators since they were camouflaged.

Clout'ra served a bloody butchering on his own behalf. Fight's as extreme as this were gift's from above for the silent second-in-command as he could recall the events that haunted him and take his anger out on everything around him without worrying about killing a friendly. When the xenomorphs charged Clout'ra, he lowered his head and spread his mauls out. When the first hard-meat lashed it's stinger out at Clout'ra, the maul-artist cleanly sliced it off, and dodging the spray of caustic blood, jumped over the assailant, landed in the midst of the horde, and went to work. He sliced left and right, accompanying every swing with a light grunt. He fought conservatively scoring only precise hits, severing a head or striking a vital point. One thing that separated his style with Riln'dra's is that he never fought in one place for more than two or three seconds, he usually got bored with one bunch and jumped toward another. At times he neutralized up to twenty xenomorphs in a mere five seconds when he saw them ganging up on approaching marines and APCs.

The situation in The Wall was critical. Every soldier was huddled, back-to-back and as close to the M-19Zs as possible. The xenomorphs didn't come in waves anymore, the good old days were long gone. They now _poured_, in an unstoppable torrent of screeching black meat. Chainguns, incinerators, and grenades were the most effective weapons against them. Unfortunately, the good stuff was running short on ammunition. Vincent had no choice but to resort to a tactic he was saving until the very last moment.

Ngun'ji on the other hand didn't fight as perfectly as Riln'dra, nor did he deliver precise hits on vital areas like Clout'ra. Being a weapons specialist and armed to the mandibles with a pair of wrist blades, combisticks, mauls, plasma casters, spear guns, and smart discs he created total chaos and a small version of Armageddon. After wasting all of his spear gun and plasma caster shots in a little under a minute, that by the way is a LOT of ammunition, he threw his smart discs while using his wrist blades for close quarters. The smart discs were very effective. The frisbee like smart discs sliced heads off on their way forward and back. When the situation near him got more critical, he switched to his favorite weapons combination - a maul and wrist blades. The maul was used as a defensive weapon blocking hits, and severing limbs in the process, while his wrist blades did all the work. Ngun'ji didn't waste time on aiming, though. He knew from many fights exactly when each hard-meat would strike when he was surrounded. He understood their pack-mentality. Ngun'ji was flurry of twisting, spinning and thrusting moves. While he didn't kill much xenomorphs, he certaintly reduced them to convulsively twitching meat or limbless and useless masses. Some bled to death, while others lost stingers. In either case, the weapons specialist was buried under flying limbs, and hard meat, jumping to their deaths.

Kujhade was the noisiest. He practically stopped issuing throaty roars only to take a breath. Other than that, he would grab a stinger and use a whole, live alien as a weapon. When that hard-meat died, most of the time from an accidental impact with a boulder, the close-quarters-combat specialist would grab another and use it to beat its fellow xenomorphs. Aliens literally flew away from his position, as Kujhade grabbed and spun them into each other, beat the crap out of them against boulders and then discarded them, looking for new prey. When he got a bit tired of that, he extended his dual wrist blades to maximum length and engaged the enemy with hand-to-hand combat techniques. His wrist blades only maximized the techniques lethality. Each punch a kill, each block – a severed limb.

In all the chaos, no one could even notice the four Predators even though the path of destruction that they left in their wake was similar to that of a missile hit. This is probably what anyone, who saw the mayhem, thought.

They needed the entrance cleared fast…this wasn't working.

"Left flank! Cease fire!" Vincent ordered, and the soldiers making up that flank complied. The xenomorphs took the chance and jumped. "After you hear the explosion, advance and hold the entrance."

Vincent unsheathed his knife and borrowed one from a nearby soldier. The aliens landed in front of the SPIDER. He made a step forward and his flurry of stabbing motions was almost too quick to notice. The xenomorphs slumped down as one. Vincent dropped the smoking knives, their blades were melting. Some skin on his forearm was burning off too, strangely though, when it came in contact with his blood the burning stopped.

"SPIDER-three, out." with these words Vincent rushed the horde filling the left flank, firing away with Malway's shotgun – _Brute_.

Vincent didn't kill everything in his path, just enough to get to the entrance. Some aliens he passed, others lost limbs but the majority's attention was recaptured by the left flank soldiers who fired once Vincent was out of sight.

"Wait a sec, that Scorpion-I mean SPIDER stole my shotgun!!" Malway yelled over the sound of automatic weapons fire.

Cork reached for another clip and noticed something. "Hey, my grenade's missing."

Other soldiers confirmed the loss.

"Mine too!"

"So's mine!!"

Cork was left in command of the left flank while Beret had the right flank. Once Vincent left, they adopted a new tactic against the xenomorphs, they fired everything they had at the alien's legs. More effective that way. Cork just couldn't understand why Vincent stole their greandes. They were going to run out of ammunition soon anyway.

"Hey, Beret!"

"YES CORPORAL?" Beret yelled back.

"Our SPIDER friend just stole Malway's automatic shotgun and all of left flank's grenades. I don't know why."

"GRENADE CHECK!!" Beret ordered.

When Beret discovered that Vincent stole _all_ of their hand-grenades he realized what the SPIDER was going to do.

It hit Kendra too. "Holy SHIT! He's gonna blow himself up!"

"…ALL OF OUR GRENADES COMBINED ARE EQUIVALENT TO A MISSILE HIT." Beret shouted.

Vincent knew that fighting against such odds wasn't bravery, it was foolish. He could never win or kill them all, but he had to get to the entrance and detonate the grenades that he commandeered. An alien got too close and received a huge hole in its chest, Vincent was down to his last clip. Too bad he could never reveal who he really was, his real mission, and why he even _cared_ about The Base and its well-being. The SPIDER expertly wielded the shotgun like a mace firing only when he had to. He was saving ammunition. The other SPIDER could finish the job.

Shanty's marines were advancing but very slowly. There was just too much aliens. They could hold their position without any problems but advancing against the gushing torrent of xenomorphs was impossible. They were severely needed at the entrance to The Wall, because with the combined firepower of the 68th's marines and the BDF, they might hold out until the dropships destroyed the last of the enemy. If only the carrier was in orbit instead of in pursuit of the alien spacecraft, they could've called for the rest of Shanty's detachment and extracted the survivors. Obviously, not an option. From the air, Captain Shanty could see that the aliens were only being fought and killed near The Base. No more xenomorphs came in through the ridges instead the mass that already got in was concentrated around The Base. The far right and left flanks already cleared it and were turning around, forcing her marines to fight on two flanks.

Riln'dra and her warriors were standing atop the same cliff they rappelled from earlier, watching the battle.

"I don't get it. Where did all the hard meat come from? Hives are never _that_ large. I mean, who were the hosts? Each hard meat has to come from a host. That's a lot of hosts."

"Maybe they didn't come from hosts." Ngun'ji suggested.

Riln'dra smirked. "Impossible."

"Mass cloning. Oomans have done it once before, to try and create an army. They were not successful though."

"Yeah I remember that." Riln'dra said. "They can clone animals without any problems but not humans. Fortunately they stopped research in that area."

She looked back onto the battlefield. If he was a Predator, with a little work the ooman might've made a worthy addition to her squad. They were all going to die anyway.

"Ngun'ji, find us a cave to rest in. We have lots of work tonight."

Ngun'ji nodded and ran away from the cliff, down into the mountains.

Captain Shanty ordered her aircraft to proceed making their rounds and hitting the aliens from behind while she rocketed toward The Wall. Beret radioed her and informed her about he thought "Vincent" was going to do. The name Vincent rang a bell in her head. She had to stop his crazy suicide idea. Too bad he didn't have a radio. She was flying so fast that she had to lift her craft's nose almost vertically to quickly stop her dropship. Once she leveled off, she remained hovering and opened fire at the entrance to The Wall, effectively stopping the flow of aliens inside. She hoped this would both prevent the flow of aliens at exhausted soldiers and the necessity for Vincent's explosion. It did.

Vincent instinctively ducked when he heard 25mm rounds plunging into the ground at the entrance. If they had started a second later, he would've been killed. The aliens which he just passed were already killed by the BDF and Echo's chainguns. The Wall was free from live enemies. The BDF was on their last clips and belts of ammunition. Shanty saved their lives, again. Vincent instantly found another use for his belt of grenades. He threw it out toward the 68th's marines, one-hundred meters away. The grenades detonation cleared a path for the marines and APCs and this time, no aliens could stop them.

The APCs instantly reformed into two vertical lines of five APCs, serving as moving walls for the running marines between them. The APC's turrets made sure a reasonable proximity was maintained between them and the aliens, while the marines covered the back and front. Once the marines were inside The Wall, the APC formed a "V" at the entrance pointing outward. While the marines rearmed the BDF and prepped them for hopefully the last phase of the battle, the APCs continued keeping the xenomorphs at a distance with their turrets. Combined with the firepower that the dropships offered, their numbers were rapidly diminishing now.

After a minute of preparation, the marines along with the BDF and Vincent, reformed at the entrance and added even more firepower. Twenty minutes later, the remaining aliens, numbering close to four and a half thousand, ran off the field, surrendering to their defeat. An unusual thing for xenomorphs to do.

Nevertheless, after the dropships made several rounds to make sure that there were no hostiles approaching the area, they landed and their pilots joined the troops. Once Captain Shanty stepped off her dropship, all of her pilots remote-piloted their ships to a designated area in the mountains. Shanty left only two pilots along with their weapons officers to patrol the valley in their dropships. There were now one-hundred seventy-seven troops. One-hundred twenty marines, fifty-six infantry from the Base Defense Force, and one SPIDER.

"Get us inside The Base." Shanty told Beret.

"Yes ma'am. Gadget, we need the tunnels open."

"Sorry private," Golmud answered. "But everything you did was in violation of my orders. Major insubordination."

"Listen Colonel. I am Captain Katherine Shanty of the 68th Naval Strike Detachment. I was given orders to hold anything I decide is of any value until the carrier USS Lakota returns. My orders were given to me by a _Vice Admiral_, outranking both of us."

"Which means?"

"Which means that I have strategic and tactical command over this Base, your troops, and you Colonel."

"I only ask for one thing in return. I want you to allow my SpecOps to put Vincent Pierce under military arrest, for insubordination, the attempted murder of a superior officer, mutinable insurrection, and taking over command on The Wall without my approval."

Shanty hated doing what she had to do. Vincent did break military law, in a way, but by doing so, he saved the lives of everyone in The Base.

"Agreed. But _I_ will evaluate his guilt and to which extent if at all he violated military law. Are we clear on this?"

"Yes Captain. Send him in first."

The titanium plates leading to four thirty-foot long tunnels, slid apart and Vincent jumped down. A second later, everyone else followed in jumping down in four lines. Shanty stood with a few troops by her, her unofficial guard – loyal marines. They would be the last to enter.

As Kendra passed Shanty she looked into the Captains eyes and said, "You don't jail a hero for valor. You didn't have to let _him_ arrest Vincent."

Kendra didn't let Shanty answer by jumping down, making the Captain feel even worse for her decision. Vincent knew what was waiting for him inside. Thirteen SpecOps. He took three of them out on The Wall. These wouldn't be very happy to see him. As he climbed up out of the tunnel and into The Complex, he was surrounded by thirteen pistol-wielding, pissed off SpecOps. And they were in a circle around him, meaning that if he fought them, they wouldn't shoot due to risk of shooting each other. The pistols were only a fierce display.

Vincent took a deep breath and thirteen safeties clicked off. With breakneck speed he dropped, swept his leg back and knocked two SpecOps down. In a split-second follow up, he was back on his feet and several side-kicks later, he only faced six SpecOps. These took a step back, just in case. Vincent then tackled one of them into the tunnel he got out of and felt two hands grab his shoulders, he broke their elbows and heard two screams. The SPIDER decided that the SpecOps were under orders to take him alive, so he risked turning his back on the three that were left and ran for Sky's quarters. Yes, he knew exactly where she was. It was his mission to know.

The SpecOps wasted no time. Soon the marines and the BDF that were pouring out of the tunnels ran in the direction that Vincent took. They didn't want him to be killed or to kill Golmud. A court-martial would sentence him to death for that. Little did they know that he didn't even intend to kill anyone.

When they reached the SPIDER in Sky's room. They saw him approach a frail-looking Japanese girl, lying in a pool of her own blood and loosely holding a knife with one hand. She looked dead. Strange thing was that her blood was light-green and luminescent. Vincent carefully lifted her.

"Someone get a doctor! Now!" Shanty ordered.

"Take her to Medical!!" Kendra cried.

Once Vincent reached the door from her room, he was stopped by Shanty's marines. Kendra took Sky from his arms and the SPIDER had no choice but to allow himself to be taken to the Base's jail. Based on a few more orders, Beret and Kendra were also jailed.


End file.
